Basement shop equipment suggestions needed

[Larry$]

they will be painted matte black.

I wouldn't do that! It will kill the lighting. Even lighting requires multiple reflective surfaces. Walls, floors, ceilings, furnishings...
A knee mill can be taken apart to move but they are still heavy. AND they are tall when assembled. Depends on what you are going to make, but Z axis is likely the limiting thing for most hobby users. I've got a Jet 9x49 knee mill (BP clone.) And have run out of Z several times. Especially true when working on castings. Bulky items can be clamped directly to the mill table. BUT a boring head & bar or drill chuck and bit or chuck and reamer ...... Then there are things like an indexing head or rotary table set vertically, or a tilting table + work + tooling!

I've found the ability to move the head in & out VIA the ram to be a great aid in increasing the work envelope. I've rotated the entire upper part of the mill and moved the ram so I can machine the end of a long part that I can hang over the side of the table. She can be tricked into all sorts of odd positions.

 

[David2011]

There's one thing in the original post that raised concerns to me. That is your comment that you probably won't need to make Imperial threads. I am not anti-metric; just realistic. Honestly, I think that is unrealistic unless you only make things that go to other things that you design. If you're working on a car, is it either an import or new enough that it is all metric? I guess most motorcycles are 100% metric. If you think the vast majority of your threading will be metric by all means get a lathe with metric leadscrews. It will make threading much easier. If you single point Imperial threads with metric leadscrews you will have to leave the half nuts engaged from start to finish, just as you would making metric threads with Imperial leadscrews.

I just moved a 13x40 lathe into my shop (all horizontal move) and it's not a small machine. It weighs about 1350 to1600 pounds depending on which figure you believe. It's a full 6 feet long and will need close to 3 feet of depth once I set it in its final position. Some room has to be left to get behind it.

 

[projectnut]

Unless you're doing a lot of grinding, I can't see the shop turning into such a mess that you need to separate the office area. I have a 6' drafting board and full-size desk only a couple feet from the cold saw and shaper. There are also 3 file cabinets and several bookshelves throughout the shop. None of the paperwork gets dirty. I do make it a point to clean up my mess at the end of the day. We had dogs for over 40 years. I would keep them out of the shop when I was working but let them in after I cleaned up.

It sounds like the turn at the bottom of your stairs is similar to mine. I believe it's 36" from the bottom step to the wall. When we built the house, we made sure the railings and posts down the basement stairs could be removed to allow machinery and stock to get into the shop. If you look at the diagram in my first post, you'll see the equipment that came down the stairs. I moved every piece by myself except the mill column and the Sheldon lathe motor cabinet using a refrigerator dolly. I am currently 75. Last year I took the Baileigh cold saw down piece by piece and reassembled it. This year I'll take the 14" Delta radial arm saw down after I finish the current project at the family cottage.

Attached are some pictures of my version of a "finished" basement. Picture #9981 shows some of the bookshelves. They're right across the aisle from the surface grinder, mill and lathe as seen in pictures #9984. Picture 9987 shows the staircase and the wall at the end. Picture #8060 shows the drawing board and desk.

 

[Winegrower]

For you guys with basement shops, is it true what they say that "The second happiest day of your life is when you get your lathe INTO the basement".

 

[projectnut]

I never looked at it that way. Over the years I've taken a couple dozen machines down to the shop and removed a few as well. To me it's not that big of a deal to move one in or out. I just plan ahead a little and take my time. I started with a wood shop in the 1980's. The first machines were a table saw, a radial arm saw, a jointer, a scroll saw, and a collection of my grandfather's cabinet making tools. Most of those machines are still there. A few wore out and were replaced, but that's just the way things go.

I made bazillions of contacts along the way and regularly get advised of machines that are being replaced. I can't handle many more, so I pass the information along to friends that have commercial fabrication shops. There are still a few machines on the "wish list" but room for them is quickly becoming a concern.

 

[katit]

There's one thing in the original post that raised concerns to me. That is your comment that you probably won't need to make Imperial threads. I am not anti-metric; just realistic. Honestly, I think that is unrealistic unless you only make things that go to other things that you design. If you're working on a car, is it either an import or new enough that it is all metric? I guess most motorcycles are 100% metric. If you think the vast majority of your threading will be metric by all means get a lathe with metric leadscrews. It will make threading much easier. If you single point Imperial threads with metric leadscrews you will have to leave the half nuts engaged from start to finish, just as you would making metric threads with Imperial leadscrews.

This is great question/concern. I said that but at the same time I am kind of "stuck" with non-metric options. I know of no true metric PM lathe offerings, instead they advertise "true imperial lead screws".

My situation is as follows: I came from metric country, in my college they teach us about some foreign "imperial" stuff and 127 gear and so on and everyone hated it

When I make some sketches drawings - I always think metric. All my hardware stock - metric. All cars and motorcycles - metric. So, I really don't know why I need anything else.

Quinn makes good point in one of the last videos - all model making resources is imperial. But I am not doing models. And everything I was making so far were in MMs..

 

[katit]

Here is pics of basement entry. Door jam opening 31in. Stairs 42in wide

 

[Ischgl99]

that is going to be interesting getting the lathe down there with that landing. I think I would take it apart as you are thinking so that you have a stripped lathe bed that you can lift vertical at the landing to get in the door. I was lucky my outside door to my basement shop was a straight run, so a flat bed wrecker was able to winch it down the stairs.

For a mill, I would take the table and head off and bring those down separately. You can build a skid to slide the base casting down and then stand it up in the landing to move sideways into the basement. Depending on what is at ground level, it might be worth expanding the landing and putting a hatch on top that can get removed to bring the equipment in. You can use a tow truck with a winch to lower it into the expanded landing, and then slide it into the shop.

As for which lathe to get, I have a 1236T and like it a lot. If I had extra money at the time, I would have gotten the 1340 for the extra capacity and the hardened gears, but for a hobby machine, the 12x36 size works fine.

I do mostly metric too, but there is the occasional imperial thread that needs to be done. No matter how much you want to be 100% metric, you can’t really avoid imperial. I leave my gears set up for metric threading and only change it when I have to. I have a DRO on my lathe and mill, so the imperial leadscrews are kind of meaningless at this point. The machines PM sells are originally metric, but are built with imperial leadscrews for our market, the rest of the world gets metric leadscrews, so they may be able to get you a metric version of the lathe if you ask. You’ll have to wait until it’s built, so if you want it soon, you might have to go with the standard version.

 

[davidpbest]

Drywall, wall paper, and drapes are for home decorators and is always in the way once you start trying to modify things.

Mind the mill height vs your ceiling height. As noted the mill motor when up might fit between joists??? Yes, get the Taiwan version of equipment. The Chinese versions are a bit of the luck of the draw as to QC. Taiwan, seems to be much more consistent and better quality. Leave space at the spindle end of the lathe so you can have a long piece of work sticking out. If you cannot leave space then put things in this space that are moveable. Or make it so that the work sticking out can go through an open door. Casters on everything is nice. Check out David P Best's postings. @davidpbest He sponsors a HM Forum so it is easy to see various postings. Just click on Forums and you will find his main threads. He probably has the ultimate Hobby basement shop and has posted lots of pictures of it and on his getting his stuff in the basement. I believe that he had a walkout man door entrance installed with a flat concrete bottom outside of the basement wall so that he could just lower tools down and then roll them into his basement shop. I think he may have the PM1340GT.

I do no recommend the PM940M (Chinese), but I have one and I got it in to a very tight spot in the basement but taking the table off and mounting it on casters so that I could just roll it around. Once in place I block it above the casters so it will not move. However, when I need to get behind it I just lower it with a jack and then roll it around. I put my PM1440GT on casters as well.... similar idea but a better job of it. I up bathroom shower floor liner (thin rubber, comes in big sheets at Home Depot or Lowes or etc.) under, and around, my tools to protect the floor from the oils and debris. (This is the stuff that mason/tile layers put under the shower floor tile to prevent water leaks.) Sometimes I throw used cardboard (boxes) down on the floor to catch the oil, especially around the Mill.

A little ventilation/exhaust is nice if you can figure it out. This is especially true if you in tend to use coolant/lubricant, which breaks down and evaporates into the face of the machinist! You said hard alloys and Stainless so you will want some air.

Good luck

Dave L.

Dave is correct. The first thing I did when I bought my house with full basement was to add a separate entrance specifically for getting equipment and large supplies in and out of the basement. It's a bulkhead entrance, with nothing more than a concrete box structure under the hinged doors and I use a forklift with slings to move stuff in and out through this entrance. A couple photos make this easier to describe, but if you want to see the entire shop build sequence, including adding this equipment entrance, you can see it all here. Full shop tour video is here.

In terms of my PM-1340GT lathe transport to the basement, that's covered in detail here. Using this process I was able to get the lathe into the basement working alone. I essentially mounted the lathe to a C-channel that would ultimately become the mounting platform once the lathe was installed on my shop-build stand. Here is a photo of what I mean.

I could have just as easily covered the steps to the basement with plywood and slid the contraption down the steps with a come-along anchored to my truck above like this:

 

[B2]

Metric threads (probably no imperial).

If you are willing to change the external gears a bit you can make either with either lead screw. The lathe manufacturers usually only list a hand full of the possible thread generating combinations. I posted an Excel workbook that I created which generates all of the possible combinations of TPI or mm/T numbers for all possible external gears that you have. For the Imperial lead screw the exchange gear combination of 127/120 does the trick. Likewise the inverse for metric to imperial. For some lathes this turns out to be thousands of possible combinations and so you can usually get to the desired thread to within a very small error. (smaller than most folks can cut anyway). I believe that the PM 1340GT and the PM1236T have the same (Norton -- nice to have) gear box and I believe the same set of external gears that come with the lathe. In the workbook they share the same spread sheet tab. It is already set up for these lathes plus others. I initially wrote it for my PM1440GT. Any of the lathe sheets can be operated manually via pull down menu tabs at the gear locations. Also, it is pretty easy to modify for other lathes. By the way, what most folks do not realize is that there are a number of thread values that the manufacturers indicate are exact in the tables, but in reality are close approximations. I included macros with will automatically generate all of the possible thread values as table in separate sheet as well as other macros which will search the tables etc. It even finds all of the standard thread values, or others of your choosing, and allows you to set the tolerance on the accuracy of any approximation. I have improved the spread sheet recently, but have not gotten around to posting the newer version yet. One sheet in the workbook is a Readme description. Meanwhile you can download the workbook at the following link.

Nov. 6 2023 Excel workbook file name: TPI_ManyLathesRev1 NB06_0054.xlsm

https://www.hobby-machinist.com/attachments/tpi_manylathesrev1-nb06_2023-zipped-zip.465427/

Dave L.