Upgrading My PM 1236-T Lathe

It's all relative, I guess. I bought a quart of primer, a quart of base coat, and three spray cans of base coat shipped to my door for $175. When I painted the South Bend lathe, the DTM paint was $65/quart and it still chipped off around the high use areas of the lathe. I found the Steel-It to dry fast (the primer where I started seemed to be basically completely dry by the time I wrapped around the lathe) and the top coat took about 2 hours to dry to the touch. I think that they do state that it gets harder over the next few days of curing. It seems pretty durable based on reviews in the off road car world, but I guess time will tell.
 
WIlly, it's looking really great. Where did you buy the Steel-it? I got mine from McMaster, but they don't carry the full line. The inside of your head looks nice and clean. When you get it all finished, I'll share with you be royal purple velvet covering cloth plans.

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davidpbest said:
WIlly, it's looking really great. Where did you buy the Steel-it? I got mine from McMaster, but they don't carry the full line. The inside of your head looks nice and clean. When you get it all finished, I'll share with you be royal purple velvet covering cloth plans.
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Thanks! I've had a really well documented path to follow, ha! I got the Steel-It paint from Wild Powersports. I went with them because I wanted to get the actual Steel-It product, and as best as I could find, McMaster is selling a knock off version. I'm sure it's perfectly acceptable and good, but since I have never used it before I wanted to get the real stuff. On top of that, the price McMaster is selling for is the same (or more) than the real product. I will say that the two quart cans came pretty badly damaged, and I'm surprised that they didn't leak all over. I guess all is well that ends well- but for such expensive paint- or really any can of paint- you would think they would ship it as if they gave a ****.

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I did make some more good progress tonight, though my shop time has expired and now I have to go be an adult and clean the house for company tomorrow. Got the change gear cover, lead screw retainer thing, carriage back gib holder thing, electronics box, headstock cover, and gap paint stripped and a layer of bondo on relevant pieces. I also have paint stripper on all the motor parts.

I do want to upgrade to the vector-capable motor, but it's another $500 (if I'm lucky- not seeing any on ebay at the moment) and I'm still deciding if the $600 of electronics to convert to VFD is crazy talk, or a good investment. For my South Bend lathe, I bought a VFD and used all the VFD ports to control the lathe. It's still unclear to me why all these contactors, fuses, bus bars, etc, etc are needed. I'll get it figured out though. Just crazy to think that I'm still $600 away from being able to plug in my $5K (now $6K) lathe!

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wildo said:
Thanks! I've had a really well documented path to follow, ha! I got the Steel-It paint from Wild Powersports. I went with them because I wanted to get the actual Steel-It product, and as best as I could find, McMaster is selling a knock off version. I'm sure it's perfectly acceptable and good, but since I have never used it before I wanted to get the real stuff. On top of that, the price McMaster is selling for is the same (or more) than the real product. I will say that the two quart cans came pretty badly damaged, and I'm surprised that they didn't leak all over. I guess all is well that ends well- but for such expensive paint- or really any can of paint- you would think they would ship it as if they gave a ****.

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That's interesting. When I bought Steel-it from McMaster a couple years ago it was the real deal. They even ordered some of the Steel-it products special for me that they don't normally carry. Maybe the new stuff is a Chinese clone. LOL
 
wildo said:
I did make some more good progress tonight, though my shop time has expired and now I have to go be an adult and clean the house for company tomorrow. Got the change gear cover, lead screw retainer thing, carriage back gib holder thing, electronics box, headstock cover, and gap paint stripped and a layer of bondo on relevant pieces. I also have paint stripper on all the motor parts.

I do want to upgrade to the vector-capable motor, but it's another $500 (if I'm lucky- not seeing any on ebay at the moment) and I'm still deciding if the $600 of electronics to convert to VFD is crazy talk, or a good investment. For my South Bend lathe, I bought a VFD and used all the VFD ports to control the lathe. It's still unclear to me why all these contactors, fuses, bus bars, etc, etc are needed. I'll get it figured out though. Just crazy to think that I'm still $600 away from being able to plug in my $5K (now $6K) lathe!
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I'm really glad I found the Baldor IDNM3587T - NOS on eBay for under $500. Really great motor.

As part of the electronics upgrade, there were two controls the I would not be without and highly recommend. The first is a jog joystick. I use it for tapping with taps and dies, and to position the spindle for coupling and uncoupling the various chucks. The other is a proximity sensor for the carriage stop - makes threading so much easier.

I'm enjoying following your progress.
 
Interesting! The proximity sensor was the thing I was thinking about nixing in order to save some cost. It's really that useful??
 
A lot of the threading I do is with dies and taps, and the jog-joystick is very useful for this. When I do single-point threading, the proximity stop is VERY useful. Have a look at this thread, especially Mark's video: https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/pm1340gt-lathe-threading-with-a-proximity-stop.45977/

That said, I find the proximity stop actually more useful for boring operations - where you're driving a boring bar down to the bottom of a blind hole. It's very easy to miss the target depth without a proximity stop. The other times I use it is as a safety limit stop - to prevent the carriage from driving a tool into the spinning chuck jaws - just in case I'm not quick enough or get distracted.

Here is a test I did that illustrates the repeatability of the proximity stop:

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Video showing proximity stop in operation

The proximity stop senses the carriage, and signals the VFD to stop the motor of the lathe. Generally, the lathe stops within one revolution of the signal, and the carriage will stop at the exact same position next operation within 0.001-inches as demonstrated here. This setup take all the...
tinyurl.com tinyurl.com
 
More painting. Definitely at the point where I’m beyond sick of paint stripper, acetone, shop towels, and paint! But almost there; I just have the tailstock, apron, and carriage left to deal with. Everything else is either completely painted or has primer applied.

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