Yet Another G4003g Delivery

jmarkwolf

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I ordered it Wednesday, it arrived Monday.

Packaging was in quite good condition, and only some slight damage to paint on the pedestals, interestingly, in the top right corner on both pedestals. Simple fix (see photos below).

I will likely be bolting the pedestals to the floor and setting the lathe this weekend.

In the meantime, I've removed the pallets and done a rudimentary inspection, doing some low test lifts with my 2-ton shop crane, and eye balling how best to approach the pedestals with the crane.

One apprehension I've had was how to hook my wide 10,000lb lifting straps to the hook on my crane. The solution I came up with is a lifting clevis from Tractor Supply Company for under $20 (see photos). It's over kill in terms of capacity (16,000 lbs), and some smaller ones would've had adequate capacity, but this one allowed enough space for the wide lifting straps, and additional straps hooks.

The crane had no trouble with the low lifts, and gave me more confidence for when it comes time to lift to the pedestals.

Now I need to locate and bolt the pedestals down, set the lathe, do a good cleaning, get a better look at things, do the first "pre-flight" and break-in, and start 'er up!

Lathe_test_lift_s.jpg Lathe_lift_clevis_s.jpg Lathe_paint_damage_s.jpg
 
I recommend you re-think bolting it to the floor. Even if your floor is perfectly flat I guarantee the bottom of the stands are not and won't be in the same plane with each other. You will have to shim them to keep from putting a twist into the lathe. Once shimmed you could then bolt it to the floor I guess.
 
Hi Coolidge

I'm reading on the forums that it's better to shim and level a "light lathe" between the bed and the pedestals, rather than between the pedestals and the floor.
 
Congratulations, I love mine. I think I would put the shims between the pedestals and the floor. Just a thought.
 
Can anyone advise how stable this lathe is without bolting to the floor?

The pedestals seem pretty robust.

It's the heaviest lathe I've owned, my previous lathe (Grizzly G9972Z 11x26) was half the weight and it was not bolted to the floor without any issues. I 'm inclined to follow the suggestion of the manufacturer, lacking any first hand experience with a lathe his heavy. But if others can advise otherwise I'm open to suggestion.

Also, is it really advisable to locate the machine 30in from the wall? And would that 30in be measured from the pedestal to the wall, or the chip tray to the wall?
 
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Here's the picture from page 18 of the manual. It shows 30" to the closest part of the lathe, which appears to be the electrical box behind the headstock:
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Steve Shannon, P.E.

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30 inches from the wall so you can get behind it to get at the coolant tank maybe.? I put mine about 12 inches from the wall. Just don't have the kind of room to be 30 inches.
If you shim between the lathe and the stands it will need sealed later if you want to run coolant.
Mine came with square cut o-rings that go on the bolts to seal the lathe, chip pan to stand area. I had no idea that they were for that and left them out. First time I ran coolant it ran into the stands and down the outside onto the floor. So I silicon sealed the lathe to the base.
This lathe is pretty stable. Top heavy of course. I added adjustable feet to mine for leveling and to add a little stability as they are out wider than the base.
 
Been teaching machine shop 36 years, worked in the trade for 10 years. We never bolted a lathe to the floor.
Assemble the lathe and pedestals first. Then level with the leveling screws it should have come with on top of leveling pads.
The weight of the machine should hold it in place just fine.
 
The stand for the G4003G is poorly designed imo. Its too shallow front to back and you can't use the holes in the stand for leveling feet because that would make it even shallower front to back. This would also raise it up even higher when its already too high off the floor for anyone shy of 6 feet tall. The stand is welded together and not exactly square, mine sort of lean to the right (face palm). While the tops of the pedestals have a ground flat area for the lathe to bolt to the bottoms are not ground flat in plane with the tops. If you bolted the pedestals to the lathe and suspended it in the air the bottoms of the pedestals are likely to be all cockeyed from each other. Then of course is your floor completely flat, unlikely.

You have two choices, set the stands flat on the floor and shim with thin metal squares to level the lathe (my current configuration), that will give you decent stability short of a medium strength earthquake. One could if they choose bolt the lathe to the floor once level. For leveling feet you will need to bolt or weld some angle or tubing to the sides of the pedestals as some have done, ideally extending the footprint front to back for improved stability. Ideally you would have 4 leveling feet under the headstock and 2 leveling feet under the tailstock.

Leave the lathe out from the wall at least for a while, you will need to get back there to install a DRO and probably deal with the motor mount issue. The lathe is not easy to clean from the front which is why I have mine sticking out from the wall at a right angle so that I can get back there to clean. I make use of that space behind the lathe for tool chests which I can roll out of the way if I need to get to the back of the lathe.

I'm out from the wall far enough to remove the tailstock when needed. Tip, note that I have secured the DRO cables to the top/center of the backsplash to keep them up out of the chip tray, I also removed the useless light and cord for the same reason.



Here you see how shallow the stand is front to back, 14.25 inches.



If you put leveling feet in these holes the footprint is further reduced to 8 inches front to back plus the diameter of your leveling feet.
 
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