New Pm-1340gt Welded Stand

[MonkMan]

Here is some information on the new welded stands being shipped with the PM1340GT.
The head stand comes with four leveling bolts and both are made from thicker steel. They come in almost 50 lbs. heavier. Quality is very good.

New spec

Old spec

Front

Hardware

Back

 

[wrmiller]

Nice. I might have to look into those. Given recent events the cast ones may be beyond my reach financially. Such is life.

 

[Alan H.]

Thanks for putting this thread up MonkMan. I thought I would add to it and hope you don't mind.

Christmas came early for me too. I received my stand earlier this week. I've had the lathe in hand for a few weeks and had to wait for the stand. Glad I did plus I had some extra help around for the holidays.

Here it is at FEDEX Freight as I picked it up. As usual, a great job of crating for shipment up by Matt and QMT:

It was packaged very well inside the crate and unscathed by the trip. Here's the headstock end pedestal with the revised design of four levelers and the thicker material. The plate for the walls is 4 mm thick and the bars for the levellers are 9 mm plate. These pedestals are plenty rigid and nicely fabricated. I put the leveling screws in from the bottom and will use them this way temporarily until I decide what to do for the feet. Just a heads up, turns out the threads for the leveling screws are an old Whitworth thread at 1/2" x 12 tpi instead of 13 tpi. If you decide you want to use Te-Co feet or something like that, just know you will have to chase the threads to 1/2" x 13 tpi. I am likely to machine some pucks for the supplied leveling screws to ride in. I will flip the screws over as intended and let the screw tips ride in a machined puck of Delrin or something like that. My son has a Sharp and a Haas that both have this sort of puck arrangement (cast iron pucks) under the leveling screws and it works very well.

Here it is cobbled together and ready to set the lathe on it. It fit together very nicely and the screws/nuts for the stretcher plate are good quality and not your typical Asian fasteners. The fit was excellent and it was fast to get it together.

Here she sits in the final spot with the lathe on it.

In summary, this is a "top shelf" stand. The supplied hardware is very good and paint is good as well. The stand is very well fabricated and the material thicknesses used make it quite substantial and up to the task. The doors are well made and functional with the latches serving well for this service. You do have to bend/fit the latch bars to install them so don't be reluctant to do it. The stand provides a little storage which is always appreciated. I'm am glad that I ended up with the new revised stand and can easily recommend it. I suspect it is going to be rock solid and I am quite pleased with it. Thanks again to QMT for providing great customer service and a great product.

 

[mksj]

Impressive, the other significant improvement is the heavy one piece top, the ones I have are two welded strips with a gap across the center. Outstanding that QMT has been able to make these improvements and pass this on to their customers. Makes a great lathe even better. Thank you for posting this update.

 

[ronboult]

The stand looks first quality when it comes to rigidity, second only to a cast iron one piece model.
How difficult would it be to modify to have a pull out swarf tray?
My Sieg Runmaster lathe stand also has a continous swarf tray ( for coolant collection) but its a pain to remove swarf and clean as it has insufficient clearance from the base of the lathe bed.
Ron

 

[Alan H.]

Ron, "If there's a will, there is a way." The approach would vary on whether or not you wanted coolant or not.

These pedestals are so nice, I personally would not touch them. But you could put a drop chute in the chip pan and a box between the pedestals with a tray. That does means you would trimming off a top portion of the stretcher to make space and you would want to return that strength via the frame that holds the pan. Then if you wanted to maintain the provision for coolant collection, you would need a drain pan below that to catch and return the coolant.

I looked at other lathes that had this provision built in before I bought this lathe but I chose to go this route instead.

Before I went to this trouble and cost, I would consider the PM1440GT which has the provision.

BTW, we have a Sharp 1340VS in the family that has a removable chip tray. It is a very nice machine but the cost reflects it. It takes a gorilla to remove and empty the pan. It is generally pulled partially out and cleaned out by hand.

 

[MonkMan]

Thanks for putting this thread up MonkMan. I thought I would add to it and hope you don't mind.

Christmas came early for me too. I received my stand earlier this week. I've had the lathe in hand for a few weeks and had to wait for the stand. Glad I did plus I had some extra help around for the holidays.

Here it is at FEDEX Freight as I picked it up. As usual, a great job of crating for shipment up by Matt and QMT:
View attachment 142116

It was packaged very well inside the crate and unscathed by the trip. Here's the headstock end pedestal with the revised design of four levelers and the thicker material. The plate for the walls is 4 mm thick and the bars for the levellers are 9 mm plate. These pedestals are plenty rigid and nicely fabricated. I put the leveling screws in from the bottom and will use them this way temporarily until I decide what to do for the feet. Just a heads up, turns out the threads for the leveling screws are an old Whitworth thread at 1/2" x 12 tpi instead of 13 tpi. If you decide you want to use Te-Co feet or something like that, just know you will have to chase the threads to 1/2" x 13 tpi. I am likely to machine some pucks for the supplied leveling screws to ride in. I will flip the screws over as intended and let the screw tips ride in a machined puck of Delrin or something like that. My son has a Sharp and a Haas that both have this sort of puck arrangement (cast iron pucks) under the leveling screws and it works very well.
View attachment 142117

Here it is cobbled together and ready to set the lathe on it. It fit together very nicely and the screws/nuts for the stretcher plate are good quality and not your typical Asian fasteners. The fit was excellent and it was fast to get it together.
View attachment 142118

Here she sits in the final spot with the lathe on it.
View attachment 142119

In summary, this is a "top shelf" stand. The supplied hardware is very good and paint is good as well. The stand is very well fabricated and the material thicknesses used make it quite substantial and up to the task. The doors are well made and functional with the latches serving well for this service. You do have to bend/fit the latch bars to install them so don't be reluctant to do it. The stand provides a little storage which is always appreciated. I'm am glad that I ended up with the new revised stand and can easily recommend it. I suspect it is going to be rock solid and I am quite pleased with it. Thanks again to QMT for providing great customer service and a great product.

I don't mind at all. The more input the better. Thanks for the post.....

 

[sanddan]

Thumbs up QMT. Great improvement to the stand.