Hi Larry, can you give me some ideas what is not so good? Anything major that you had to deal with? I am hoping this PM is several steps up from the Grizzly?
The PM lathe only had a few issues as far as I can tell. Note that I'm no metalworking expert! But I did retire from my wood based mfg. business with lots of experience dealing with equipment. I did have two Grizzly tools there. A heavy drill press that was a POS and poor parts support. Sold it to some other fool. An oscillating edgesander that was OK± but not great. It was also sold under the Powermatic name for a lot more $.
PM 1440HD issues: the shear pin on the feed shaft had a hardened spring pin instead of the brass one shown in the parts manual. This meant there was no safety in case the feed was jambed. I made a new brass pin... Fixed
The head & tailstocks were slightly out of adjustment as it came. I did the adjustments as described in the manual. I bought a 2" bar of steel to do the headstock & 1 1/2" to do the tailstock. There are probably cheaper ways. The adjustments are tedious but have held.
Access to the ball oiler on the threading shaft, right end was blocked by the casting. I ground the casting clear.
The parts book showed a quick handle on the carriage lock but there was just a SHCS. I found a quick handle in my spare parts stock for my business, fixed.
The head stock came w/o any oil in it. Not sure why since the quick change box & carriage had oil. Easy fix, bought a 5 gallon of the recommended Mobil from the local distributor. You need to buy oil anyway to change out the oil after break in.
The already installed, by PM/QMT, DRO encoder covered up the crossfeed lock screw. There was no way around that, that I could see. So I cobbled together a lock on the headstock side that seems to work fine.
The QCGB seeped oil. It has a very thin gasket surface. A lot like a British motorcycle. I took the front cover off and used silicone gasket maker. I don't recommend doing that unless you are a glutton for punishment! Getting everything back together was a real PIA. And it still seeps oil. Luckily the oil travels to the chip pan instead of the floor. It probably takes a year to get low. I replaced the SHCSs on the change gear door with a single knurled screw I made. The machine has plenty of imperial threads available on the QCGB but only a few metric so changing gears manually has to be done sometimes, not difficult but greasy.
I've never used the coolant system, don't want to deal with the mess. I removed the light that came on the carriage along with the coolant distribution things. Didn't like the way the light worked.
I installed a stop to keep the tailstock lock handle from flopping down onto the ways. I put a washer on the tailstock ram lock to make it lock away from the working area.
The electrical box is on the back side so you need to keep access to that when figuring where to install the machine.
I already had a high quality Polish made level from my days of installing CNC equipment. I used that when installing the PM1440HD. I have gone back several years later to make sure all was still running true.
This machine has a cast iron base that serves as a very large, easy to clean chip pan.
The foot brake works great but I have rarely used it. There have been occasions, when doing something chancy (stupid) that I have had my toe over it.
I have opened all compartments and inspected for trash. All were clean.
3 HP 3 phase, never have had a shortage of power. Almost forgot. QMT had changed out the Chinese motor to a Polish made one before shipping. Doesn't say a lot for their confidence in Chinese motors but does say a lot for the integrity of QMT!
I have a good Japanese dial test indicator and have run it over every surface I can find. No issues found.
Any thing else I can answer?
