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Which new lathe?
- Thread starter JSTAR3006
- Start date
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bigngreen
Well-Known Member
Absalutely have a three phase motor with a VDF, dialing in your speeds is a God send on lighter lathes or with fewer gear change speeds. My big LaBlond is a beast and I drive it with a rotary, nice to have weight but for gunsmithing it's a bit of a pig compared to my PM 1340GT.
I live in BFE Montana, warranty and the help to make a repair myself is essential, PM has been on it the little I've needed them!!
I live in BFE Montana, warranty and the help to make a repair myself is essential, PM has been on it the little I've needed them!!
A VFD is absolutely the way to go. Get a three phase motor and install a VFD and you will be all set. They are not difficult to deal with or install and make things so much better. Rotary phase converters are very antiquated, in my opinion. They are expensive and loud and you still don't get the benefit of the variable drive. There are plenty of posts online about how to wire and install a VFD.
bigngreen
Well-Known Member
I just have to swap a back gear and bushing and reset my engagement and I'm cutting the common metric threads too, the VDF is useful here as well because I can roll it down to a speed I can retract and reverse the feed while not disengaging feed.
Need the extra money to keep farming?
Question: What's a farmer do when he wins a million bucks in the lottery?
Answer: Keeps farming till it's all gone!
freddiej
Well-Known Member
I came in to give my opinion but read a few posts and learned some things and now I am going to have to do some reading and some asking.. I have lots of machinist friends.. they mostly like Lagun, Monarch and South Bend. What got me is that I need a new Lathe as well.. now I have some things to think about. Never even thought about Grizzly machines. later.
take A knowledgeable guy for a 10EE......so many kinds of drives...........
Some of the lesser known are great.
Graziano SAG 12 ......2300 lbs I think.
Three threading types. Two sets of ways.
They were bought out by the Maho group.
Deckel is another of their brands.
But always with used......take a rebuilder.
The head bearings on my Graziano would have cost $3500.........25 years ago. Plus installation.
Buyer beware
Some of the lesser known are great.
Graziano SAG 12 ......2300 lbs I think.
Three threading types. Two sets of ways.
They were bought out by the Maho group.
Deckel is another of their brands.
But always with used......take a rebuilder.
The head bearings on my Graziano would have cost $3500.........25 years ago. Plus installation.
Buyer beware
In the PM 1340 and 1440 group, it appears only the 1340GT and 1440GT are made in Taiwan. I bought a 1340 with 3 phase and a Hitachi VFD (I think it was around $280). Wired it myself and put the speed control pot below and in between the coolant switch and jog button.
dragonfly
Member
There are several good gunsmith lathes, probably anyone of the quality lathes would do your job. The things I think are important are the features that are going to make your job easier. You want a lathe that has a fairly narrow head stock that will allow you to extend both ends of your barrel blank giving you the ability to indicate or line up both ends of the barrel for perfect total run out. You want a spindle RPM range that will allow the slower revs. for chamber reaming. You want a tailstock with torque control when clamping if possible. Grizzly has an excellent gunsmith lathe with all these features, for about 8k dollars, well within your budget. Hope this helps.
Thank you! I need to get back over there, but I end up spending too much money!
I bought the 3-phase PM 1440 since I'll get a better surface finish over the single-phase. Added an American rotary 10hp that'll pull the 3hp lathe motor no problems. Quite a few installs on YT that show my exact convertor. These units run very quiet. I will make an enclose lined with acoustic foam to make it non-existent for noise. I asked over on Practical Machinist about VFD's; yes they are good, but the wiring is not for the noob or faint hearted. One fellow, who does machine-tool wiring told me he had done several of my model lathes. It will take him one full day to rewire the machine for a VFD since the controls all go through it. It all became a mess. I live where there are no machine tool experts, had even considered asking PM to have it rewired and I'd pay before they even crated it, but the complexity and departure from the original machine would void the warranty. I'll stick with the RPC. So I'm in for around $26k with shipping right now, and will have to add tooling, but am confident this will all come together.
Like one poster said, cry now, cry once and done.
I'll be setting aside tooling as I get ready for retirement
We'll check to see what you have and need
FWIW, rewiring my PM1340GT took a little thinking but not too bad. Being an engineer (retired) probably didn't hurt. If it would be of any value I could attempt to post a drawing (schematic) of the wiring. Hitachi was very helpful with setting parameters. The jog input (speed programmable) needs to have an "ON" input at the same time. I put a small signal diode from the jog to the On forward input. This prevents the jog function being energized when the normal forward control is used. I could have added a switch so I could jog in both directions but didn't bother. I set the jog speed to 6Hz.
