PM935-TV Arrives

[catoctin]

Thanks Mike. I find it hard to knock HF because of their prices. However, you can't use their stuff for anything critical. Those butterfly wrenches are on sale this month for $14 for "Inside Track Club" members. I bought one of their 20 ton presses for $150 in December. The funny thing is they got great reviews on the original and then they imported a cost reduced version. The original had a bolted top cross member, fixed jack, and a gusseted stand. Well they are now MIG welding the top cross member on, the jack free floats, and the gussets are gone. That's ok. I planned to and build a welded on "H" frame from 3" x 4" with wheels to roll it around. The floating jack seems fine and would have probably of welded the top member anyway. I picked up one of their 7x12 metal cutting band saws in July with pretty low expectations. The first one had very obvious shipping damage. The main pulley shaft was bent at a 20 degree angle. I bought it from one of their stores so the freight delivery guys are off the hook. They replaced it no questions asked. The second one cuts straight and I still haven't managed to wear out the blade yet. Their welding clamps are a bargain. Not exactly Besseys but that's ok. Close enough. I would never buy machinery from them or a TIG/MIG welder. That's where to spend your money when precision is important. Going back to the press. I can't tell you how many bearings my dad and I pressed in with bar and threaded stock. At $150, I think my dad would have sprung for one of their presses.

-Joe

Look awesome Joe. Great job and great to see you have a helper out there in the shop. Treasure those times.

As far as the HF butterfly, I too had to go through a couple before getting one that was worth the crap. Just another reason I hate HF.

Mike.

 

[zmotorsports]

Thanks Mike. I find it hard to knock HF because of their prices. However, you can't use their stuff for anything critical. Those butterfly wrenches are on sale this month for $14 for "Inside Track Club" members. I bought one of their 20 ton presses for $150 in December. The funny thing is they got great reviews on the original and then they imported a cost reduced version. The original had a bolted top cross member, fixed jack, and a gusseted stand. Well they are now MIG welding the top cross member on, the jack free floats, and the gussets are gone. That's ok. I planned to and build a welded on "H" frame from 3" x 4" with wheels to roll it around. The floating jack seems fine and would have probably of welded the top member anyway. I picked up one of their 7x12 metal cutting band saws in July with pretty low expectations. The first one had very obvious shipping damage. The main pulley shaft was bent at a 20 degree angle. I bought it from one of their stores so the freight delivery guys are off the hook. They replaced it no questions asked. The second one cuts straight and I still haven't managed to wear out the blade yet. Their welding clamps are a bargain. Not exactly Besseys but that's ok. Close enough. I would never buy machinery from them or a TIG/MIG welder. That's where to spend your money when precision is important. Going back to the press. I can't tell you how many bearings my dad and I pressed in with bar and threaded stock. At $150, I think my dad would have sprung for one of their presses.

-Joe

I agree Joe, those HF butterfly guns are pretty cheap, it is just a crap shoot on getting a good one. I recently sold my original power drawbar to a forum member and before I shipped it off to him and took the receipt and ran down to exchange the butterfly with a new one for him. Then installed it and tested it prior to boxing it up and shipping it. The one I originally had on it was leaking pretty bad, it worked well but it was leaking internally and seemed to be exhausting more than it should. The 90-day warranty was about up so I just ran down and exchanged it. I felt better about it having a fresh one on the drawbar.

I had one of their hydraulic presses about 20+years ago. Although it worked I was not impressed with it, probably because I was used to high quality Nugier 20-ton press at the maintenance shop I was working in. I was doing a lot of transmissions, gearboxes, motorcycle engines/transmissions at the time and just wasn't impressed with it. My company bought a new air over hydraulic 30-ton press one year and offered the Nugier to the employees through a silent bid process. I won the bid, brought it home, cleaned it, reconditioned/re-sealed it and it has been a very heavily used piece of equipment and quite a welcomed addition to my shop. I gave my brother my HF one and he still has it in his home shop.

I almost bought one of the HF 4x6 horizontal bandsaws about a year ago after reading a lot of very high reviews of it after some "tweaking". I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I ended up keeping my eyes open and found a well used mid-90's Taiwan made Jet 7x12 for a few hundred dollars and cleaned it up. It has been working well and much nicer than the abrasive chop saw I had been using for the previous 20+ years. It is nice to not have to move the motorcycles out of the shop just to avoid flying sparks from the chop saw. I am looking to upgrade it to a miter style someday but haven't fixated on a brand yet.

Mike.

 

[catoctin]

Mike,
Can't wait to see your next power drawbar. I am assuming you sold the one you posted on your PM-935 thread.

-Joe

I agree Joe, those HF butterfly guns are pretty cheap, it is just a crap shoot on getting a good one. I recently sold my original power drawbar to a forum member and before I shipped it off to him and took the receipt and ran down to exchange the butterfly with a new one for him. Then installed it and tested it prior to boxing it up and shipping it. The one I originally had on it was leaking pretty bad, it worked well but it was leaking internally and seemed to be exhausting more than it should. The 90-day warranty was about up so I just ran down and exchanged it. I felt better about it having a fresh one on the drawbar.

I had one of their hydraulic presses about 20+years ago. Although it worked I was not impressed with it, probably because I was used to high quality Nugier 20-ton press at the maintenance shop I was working in. I was doing a lot of transmissions, gearboxes, motorcycle engines/transmissions at the time and just wasn't impressed with it. My company bought a new air over hydraulic 30-ton press one year and offered the Nugier to the employees through a silent bid process. I won the bid, brought it home, cleaned it, reconditioned/re-sealed it and it has been a very heavily used piece of equipment and quite a welcomed addition to my shop. I gave my brother my HF one and he still has it in his home shop.

I almost bought one of the HF 4x6 horizontal bandsaws about a year ago after reading a lot of very high reviews of it after some "tweaking". I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I ended up keeping my eyes open and found a well used mid-90's Taiwan made Jet 7x12 for a few hundred dollars and cleaned it up. It has been working well and much nicer than the abrasive chop saw I had been using for the previous 20+ years. It is nice to not have to move the motorcycles out of the shop just to avoid flying sparks from the chop saw. I am looking to upgrade it to a miter style someday but haven't fixated on a brand yet.

Mike.

 

[wildo]

I started out cleaning up around the mill with an old Lowes mini shop vac. The filter was always clogging up with chips and oil. Several folks have used Oneida Dust Deputies and have been very happy with them so I decided to try one. Most folks think the home cyclone vacuums are a new thing but they have been used for years in industry. So I decided to build my "chiperator" for cleaning up in the shop area.

...

This thing works great. Almost all of the oil and chip debris ends up in the can. The only things that seem to make it back to the vacuum are sheets of paper and an occasional shop towel.

I realize this is an old thread. I was doing a forum search for "cyclone" and found this thread. The Oneida website does state that the Dust Deputy can be used for "Metal Scraps and Shavings" but I wondered how well it worked once those metal scraps were covered in cutting oil and all clumped together. In fact, I was wondering this about cyclone systems in general and trying to research it.

You posted about your Dust Deputy more than a year ago now. Still using it? Still like it? Would you say that a bigger, dedicated cyclone dust collection system might be money well spent? Or does a simple shop vac with the Dust Deputy more than suffice?

 

[catoctin]

I realize this is an old thread. I was doing a forum search for "cyclone" and found this thread. The Oneida website does state that the Dust Deputy can be used for "Metal Scraps and Shavings" but I wondered how well it worked once those metal scraps were covered in cutting oil and all clumped together. In fact, I was wondering this about cyclone systems in general and trying to research it.

You posted about your Dust Deputy more than a year ago now. Still using it? Still like it? Would you say that a bigger, dedicated cyclone dust collection system might be money well spent? Or does a simple shop vac with the Dust Deputy more than suffice?

Sorry for the late reply. I still use my setup and it stills works well with a few caveats along the lines of your questions. My unit is the all metal setup. The hose leading to Oneida gets a little heavy after extended use. I am assuming oily chips are finding their way into the vacuum tube corrugation rings. The other issue I had just recently was with long skinny chips of aluminum. These tended to ball up and block the inlet. This actually happened a little over a week ago for the first time. Other than that my unit works great. The big Rigid shop vac works great with the unit and makes cleanup a snap. The nice thing is the vacuum stays relatively clean. Every now and then I vacuum up a blue paper shop towel. These will make it back to the vacuum.

One side note. Cyclone separators in general work pretty well. They pretty much work like Dyson vacuum cleaners by using a cyclone flow to strip particles out of the air flow. This prevents the clogging a the shop vac's filter and helps to maintain air flow. I bought an HF media blast cabinet and did the Tacoma upgrade to it. Mike from Tacoma requests that the side port on the cabinet be the inlet and the rear port be the outlet. Both ports are covered with shrouds to prevent good media from getting out of the cabinet. I have a plastic Dust Deputy with Fein Hepa vacuum connected to the outlet. It pretty much keeps the media dust out of the vacuum.

 

[wildo]

Thanks for the response, catoctin. Sounds like I was thinking around the right lines. Glad to know that a standard shop vac will likely be plenty strong for my application and no need to spend the big bucks on a dedicated (and power consuming) cyclone system. Thanks again!