Basement shop equipment suggestions needed

[Ischgl99]

You may rethink the DRO and collet chucks in the future, they are very handy even in a non-production environment. I really like being able to machine short pieces in my collets and not having the jaws whirling around while breaking edges close to the chuck. I would do everything in my collet chucks if I could.

The chuck you reference has an adjustment feature that lets you move the chuck body a small amount relative to the backplate to adjust out runout. It also has two piece jaws so you can make soft jaws for it to hold work that could get marked up by the jaws, or if you need a particular depth you want to hold, just machine that into the soft jaw. My lathe came with a standard 3 jaw chuck with about 0.007” runout, I will be upgrading it to a two piece jaw chuck at some point and likely an adjustable one so that I can get more accurate runout for second ops.

 

[katit]

You may rethink the DRO and collet chucks in the future, they are very handy even in a non-production environment. I really like being able to machine short pieces in my collets and not having the jaws whirling around while breaking edges close to the chuck. I would do everything in my collet chucks if I could.

The chuck you reference has an adjustment feature that lets you move the chuck body a small amount relative to the backplate to adjust out runout. It also has two piece jaws so you can make soft jaws for it to hold work that could get marked up by the jaws, or if you need a particular depth you want to hold, just machine that into the soft jaw. My lathe came with a standard 3 jaw chuck with about 0.007” runout, I will be upgrading it to a two piece jaw chuck at some point and likely an adjustable one so that I can get more accurate runout for second ops.

Collet chucks and DRO in a future - sure. Right now I want lathe I can "grow with". If I get more free time and able to use lathe more, I can always upgrade.

 

[B2]

Collet chucks and DRO in a future - sure. Right now I want lathe I can "grow with". If I get more free time and able to use lathe more, I can always upgrade.

"Always"!? Sometimes the original parts are no longer available. A lot of parts are interchangeable, but..... A chuck should always be or can be fashioned to work, but other parts.

I agree having a DRO is very handy. Some things you do think you need turn out to be used all of the time. Others not so much.

When I purchased my PM1440GT it came with a lot of the parts that you now have to purchase separately. I think PM did this to bring the price back down not to gouge the buyer. Anyway, I did buy the magnetic DRO from them and had them install it. No regrets. Likewise, no regrets about buy tooling from PM. It may not always be the best, but Matt has gone to considerable lengths to try to make sure these parts work decently. So buying them is a pretty safe bet and you have them to get started with.

The machine motor was the 3 phase version and then I did a VFD conversion. This took quite a while as I had to learn. One of the things that came out of the VFD conversion was the extra features of controlling the motor and lathe plus safety. I built a proximity stop and having this turns out to be really nice as well as a safety feature. The 3 phase motor was suppose to run smoother than 1 phase, I cannot say either way, and give you easy control of the motor speed. The VFD made that happen. The VFD electronic brake feature means that I virtually never use the lathe's foot brake. Now the manual foot brake is only a safety feature used when all else fails. I think the number of times I have used it one could count on one hand.

I never ask, I assume you are buying the single phase motor. Make sure you have sufficient power available. Anyway, just in case here is the link to my PM1440GT VFD conversion:

VFD conversion using solid state electronic components.

 

[katit]

"Always"!? Sometimes the original parts are no longer available. A lot of parts are interchangeable, but..... A chuck should always be or can be fashioned to work, but other parts.

I never ask, I assume you are buying the single phase motor. Make sure you have sufficient power available. Anyway, just in case here is the link to my PM1440GT VFD conversion:

Collet chuck for D1-5 mount? I thought it's a "generic" accessory not related to PM lathe, am I wrong?
Same for DRO, can be installed at any time, people retrofit old lathes, it's not made "to lathe"

I think I wrote above somewhere, I am planning on 3ph and do VFD right away. I did install VFD on my 9-19 lathe and it was night and day. I kind of have to have VFD. I have single phase in my house, I have 50A 220V where lathe will be, this should be good enough I think. I really need like 10-20A?

On a side note: Any experience on this? https://acramachinery.com/product/1340bv-precision-gap-bed-variable-speed-lathe/

 

[B2]

50 Amp 220V is plenty. I don't know anything about that lathe. Sorry. My machining experience is pretty much limited to the equipment I have. I am a retired electrical engineer, materials engineer, physicis, professor, who worked/works mostly on magnetism, sensors, transducer, optics, and data storage. I largely use my shop to make parts for my instrumentation experiments.... home projects and to play.

 

[katit]

I checked if PM can get me metric version and they said yes, it is special order and wait but doable. And extra $$. Decisions, decisions

 

[B2]

I checked if PM can get me metric version and they said yes, it is special order and wait but doable. And extra $$. Decisions, decisions

Why do you need/want to spend extra for this? Sure, the USA is messed up by using mostly Imperial and partly Metric and for the most part is stuck with a system that not even England has used for decades. Anyway, after many years of multiplying by 25.4 to get to mm from inches I find it to be a trivial task. By the way, the 2.54 factor is an exact conversion. Note that the transpose gear has 127 teeth. It is not an accident that this number was used, 2*127 = 254.

Download the phone app called "RealCalc", which is a nice, free, scientific calculator, and you will always have it handy. I have been using if to years.

Quartic Software

RealCalc Scientific Calculator - Apps on Google Play

Scientific calculator for Android - looks and operates like the real thing!

play.google.com

You said you were not very interested in threading, but if you look at the Excel program I provided, you will see that there are commonly many gear arrangements that will yield the exact TPI values and that if you are willing to be accurate to a percent or even better you will find that there are a lot more gear arrangements. Unless one has two long threaded pieces to match over a long distance, which I have never seen, the approximations are far better than most folks can cut to anyway. Besides, many threading requirements are meant to be a little loose. Many times the TPI values vs. gear arrangements that the manufacture lists on the lathe name plates are only made to an approximation of the exact TPI value.

 

[Cadillac STS]

I am in my 40th and hope to be able to use this for coupled decades at least

 

[Cadillac STS]

Don’t forget to get a good quality horizontal band saw for cutting stock. If you don’t have one you quickly will see how it is essential!

 

[katit]

Why do you need/want to spend extra for this? Sure, the USA is messed up by using mostly Imperial and partly Metric and for the most part is stuck with a system that not even England has used for decades.

Well, I am from metric country. When I was in a college studying mechanical engineering - I remember how painful this was. Imagine all our drawings, all our hardware, EVERYTHING is metric. And, they teach you about this 127 gears and imperial stuff. I was like OMG, why would we need all that? Living in US for last 25 years I got used to F, miles, inches, LBs. But I didn't get used to .0001"
I guess in school, they had to teach us all this because lots of machinery was either imported or copied and machinists had to know. Even though production was all in metric sizes.

All my hobbies revolve around cars/motorcycles. This is all metric. I am thinking metric in my head, if I make part sketch - it's metric.

Why would I want to pay extra for this? It's a pretty big purchase, and I wouldn't like to compromise on this and get what I want. True, I said I don't care about threads. But if I am going to do them - they will be most likely metric and I want lathe to be on my side (I know differences in how threads gage works based on lead screw). I would go further into saying - I don't want any of inch stuff on dials