What a roller coaster! Today started with phone calls to United Rentals at 7:30 hunting a trailer and a text from the seller at 7:45 wondering if I was coming to pick up the lathe today. United had a trailer come back into their yard late AM but held it up for “minor maintenance” and finally made it available just before 1:00. I was at the seller’s warehouse just after 3:00, loaded up and back on the road in 40 minutes and home at about 4:30. Traffic was remarkably smooth for that time of day in Houston. After a sandwich and a short break the lathe was put on dollies and in the shop by 8:30 where it will remain until tomorrow morning.
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Price Point or Size for Better Quality?
- Thread starter David2011
- Start date
After running out and buying a replacement for the pinch bar that disappeared when I last moved, I decided that the lathe will sit on the wheels until a toe jack arrives. When I realized how many places I would need it, the price was quickly dismissed.
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2022
- Messages
- 1,675
I bought a 4 ton porta power which has many handy hydraulic options, one of which is a clam shell which I use to lift my equipment with just as a toe jack would and spent about the same.
I just checked and was surprised at how affordable the 4 ton porta power is at Home Depot. I'll definitely keep that in mind for the future. The toe jack wasn't very expensive. It's just an Amazon cheapie but the nickel and dime part has become $30 here and $100 there. The battleship guys have a pneumatic/hydraulic porta power (maybe 20 tons?) that they've used to remove the barrels on the 3" and 5" guns from their slides. That's actually pretty scary at times. The 5" barrels are right at 5-1/2 tons and the slide that permits movement during recoil is almost 2 tons. Sometimes something pops out sideways so we all stand well clear.
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2022
- Messages
- 1,675
Its been months since they posted any updates on their YouTube channel....
I know. I've talked with the operations manager and offered my services. I have a broadcasting degree and my first career was in television for 12 years. I offered to shoot video for their video and editing guy. Battleship New Jersey posts on a regular schedule. I think the Texas should be doing the same, whether weekly or monthly. Months between posts is not a way to develop viewership and potentially advertising and donation revenue.
The lathe is still on the dollies but I really wanted to power it up and check it out. The good news is that the motor ran right off the bat and the leadscrew/threading part all worked. It's reasonably quiet at all speeds but the gears on the banjo are meshing a little too tight so that needs to be adjusted. No big deal. I couldn't get the carriage shaft to turn. Finally I grabbed it, gave a twist and thought, "Someone has opened up the quick change gear box and disconnected it because something was broken." I removed the sheet metal cover so I could see the coupling, gave a twist and saw that the screws that attach the coupling to the shaft coming from the QC gear box were missing. Obviously the dealer didn't check it out as well as he wanted me to believe. I tried several metric and Imperial screws that I had on hand and found that 8-32 screws were an almost fit so I put two in and was able to check out the carriage travel on its shaft. Worked like it should. As I was ready to quit messing with it for the evening I saw what looked like a screw among the chips that hadn't been cleaned out. Most of the tray was clean; just thankfully a few remained around the base of the headstock. A quick spritz of brake cleaner and it was installed. It fit much better than the 8-32; probably a 3.5mm. I dug around in the chips and found the other screw. Unbelievable! Overall I'm fairly happy.
Still to do: The Shenzhen ENC VFD is not programmed properly. It's still set on 50 Hz and the external controls don't work right. The manual is horrible. It's hard to interpret what they're describing in the functions column at times but I'll hope that the experience gained setting up my Automation Direct recently will help. The VFD runs directly to the spindle motor so all electrical functions have been bypassed. The main power switch does nothing. Hoping it's a 2 or 3 pole switch that I can use to switch the VFD on and off. The coolant pump has no power. The brake slows the spindle but since the electrics are bypassed it doesn't disengage the VFD. The clutch shaft doesn't start and stop the spindle. I really wanted the foot break and clutch/spindle features so I hope to be able to reconfigure the power delivery back to original even if it means installing a single phase coolant motor or a second small VFD for the coolant pump. Finally, the spindle is puking oil at the right end. I hope there's an oil seal that I can replace there.
I could be happier if everything was perfect but this is tolerable. Most of it can be fixed at little expense, I think. I just have to learn how some of these things like the clutch/motor switch are supposed to work. This is my first lathe with more than a single dual function leadscrew.
I attempted to get a manual from Victor Machines. The guy that answered the phone wouldn't even start a conversation until I have him a serial number. He had to call me back 3 times to correct errors in my credit card information. When the first part of the PDF manual arrived in my email I immediately sent an email back to him telling him that the manual was not for my lathe; it was for the other 1340GHE. Victor made the brilliant move of giving two similar lathes the exact same model name. The major difference is their quick change gearboxes which was exactly the information I wanted. Mostly I wanted to know what had to be changed with the spindle stopped and what had to be changed with it spinning. Everything else is pretty much like any other lathe I've run.
I've ordered the correct manual from Ozark Tool Manuals. He is very clear about there being two different 1340GHE models and had a picture of them in his ads for easy identification.
A water jet cutting company gave me some mild steel drops to make pads for the leveling screws.
Still to do: The Shenzhen ENC VFD is not programmed properly. It's still set on 50 Hz and the external controls don't work right. The manual is horrible. It's hard to interpret what they're describing in the functions column at times but I'll hope that the experience gained setting up my Automation Direct recently will help. The VFD runs directly to the spindle motor so all electrical functions have been bypassed. The main power switch does nothing. Hoping it's a 2 or 3 pole switch that I can use to switch the VFD on and off. The coolant pump has no power. The brake slows the spindle but since the electrics are bypassed it doesn't disengage the VFD. The clutch shaft doesn't start and stop the spindle. I really wanted the foot break and clutch/spindle features so I hope to be able to reconfigure the power delivery back to original even if it means installing a single phase coolant motor or a second small VFD for the coolant pump. Finally, the spindle is puking oil at the right end. I hope there's an oil seal that I can replace there.
I could be happier if everything was perfect but this is tolerable. Most of it can be fixed at little expense, I think. I just have to learn how some of these things like the clutch/motor switch are supposed to work. This is my first lathe with more than a single dual function leadscrew.
I attempted to get a manual from Victor Machines. The guy that answered the phone wouldn't even start a conversation until I have him a serial number. He had to call me back 3 times to correct errors in my credit card information. When the first part of the PDF manual arrived in my email I immediately sent an email back to him telling him that the manual was not for my lathe; it was for the other 1340GHE. Victor made the brilliant move of giving two similar lathes the exact same model name. The major difference is their quick change gearboxes which was exactly the information I wanted. Mostly I wanted to know what had to be changed with the spindle stopped and what had to be changed with it spinning. Everything else is pretty much like any other lathe I've run.
I've ordered the correct manual from Ozark Tool Manuals. He is very clear about there being two different 1340GHE models and had a picture of them in his ads for easy identification.
A water jet cutting company gave me some mild steel drops to make pads for the leveling screws.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2014
- Messages
- 1,111
Electrical issues you say? Plenty of support here. The VFD looks like an add on since original manufacturing. The original (from your comments, still installed), electrical system was a conventional 3 phase, contactor, likely with low voltage (120v) controls. That is a very common set up on industrial machines. A conversion to VFD power can be done a few ways (ie. the right way and the wrong way). The VFD needs to be wired directly to the motor, and the VFD provides the motor control - the original switch gear is not used. You can then run the motor directly from the VFD panel. That works, but it is much cooler to repurpose the original panel switches to the control input of the VFD, add a potentiometer to your machine switch panel, and put the VFD in a protect cabinet out of the way - looks great, works great. The other approach (wrong one) is to run the VFD to generate the 3 phase power and feed the existing electrical supply and run off the machine’s standard electrics which is likely to destroy something, probably the VFD.
It sounds like your machine has been given a VFD conversion, they were correct in bypassing the factory original electrical controls, but they didn’t go through the effort to package it up all pretty. Many folks here have done the full conversion (I have on two machines), hopefully you can sort through the VFD manual. The first conversion I did involved going through the manual about 50 times (there are a lot of features), and numerous temporary set ups scabbed together. Even looked at some other VFD manuals, often different drives will have similar features, but differ in how to program them. Post more pictures, ask lots of questions.
It sounds like your machine has been given a VFD conversion, they were correct in bypassing the factory original electrical controls, but they didn’t go through the effort to package it up all pretty. Many folks here have done the full conversion (I have on two machines), hopefully you can sort through the VFD manual. The first conversion I did involved going through the manual about 50 times (there are a lot of features), and numerous temporary set ups scabbed together. Even looked at some other VFD manuals, often different drives will have similar features, but differ in how to program them. Post more pictures, ask lots of questions.