I ordered a PM-940M-PDF

[Dan_S]

It won't arrive till late March or Early April, but when It does arrive, for sure.

Congrats!!!
That looks like THE Xmas present to me!
If you have it up and running and are in a great mood, I'd love to come and see that beauty! PWEEEEEZE?

 

[Dan_S]

Since the holidays are over and it's back to reality tomorrow, I thought I should post the photos I promised.


a 2" Criterion boring head


A 1/2" integral shank Vertex drill chuck


I picked up a range of endmills, they are all YG, Niagra or Union Butterfield. This 7/8" 5 flue rougher was a steal I found on amazon.


I purchased 4 of these 1/2" x 4" leveling feet for the base I'm going to build.


I brought this 18" x 24" surface plate the 700 miles back from Christmas vacation in central Pennsylvania


I finally picked up a nice set of Bondhus hex wrenches to use on the mill and my lathe


My girlfriend got me a nice Starrett adjustable parallel set .




The one important thing I didn't get a photo of was the 6" phase II horizontal/Vertical rotary table. It and the tail stock and indexing plates that go with it, are locked away in the bottom of a tool cabinet until I can make a decent storage case for it.

 

[Dan_S]

A small set of these little beauties were waiting for me when I got home from work today. They don't have the embossed back to back Cs like they used to, but the fit & finish still looks very good.

 

[Dan_S]

The 1.5" 45 degree seht/sehw face mill I order arrived yesterday, and I have to say I'm very please with its quality. The machining and black oxide finish looks very good considering the price. I would go as far as saying the one I got looks better than the one pictured on their website. I'v ordered some inserts for it, but they are on a very slow boat coming from China/Hong Kong.

 

[wrmiller]

Nice face mill. I've been looking at the Shars mills as I have had no complaints about the stuff I've bought from them. Especially given the price.

 

[Dan_S]

Nice face mill. I've been looking at the Shars mills as I have had no complaints about the stuff I've bought from them. Especially given the price.

I'm skeptical about some stuff they sell, but for tooling like this about the worst thing that can happen is the insert pockets not all being at the same height. If that ended up being the case I could just remove all the inserts but one and use it as a fly cutter. )

 

[Dan_S]

So I took advantage of Enco's 20% of and free shipping on Tuesday, and picked up some more stuff for the mill, and shop (some Mitutoyo stuff I've been wanting for a while).

I picked up an assortment of smooth single cut Nicholson mill files for deburring. My old files where warn out and haven't really been used since I got a chamfering bit for the lathe.


I got 2 sets of these B&S machinist jacks, because they where so cheap ($22).


I got several sizes of Thomson linear shafting to use for setting up the mill and general shop set up.


I've been wanting a Noga holder forever, so I picked up one of the new small models. It's a little bit bigger than the rare earth magnet versions Tom Lipton & Adam Booth use, but still small enough to fit just about any place, and it has a micro adjust.


Some of the Korloy inserts I ordered from Hong Kong a few weeks ago just arrived today. The are The high polish and rake SEHT inserts the Glacern sells for Aluminum. The funny thing about these inserts, is that if you try and look them up in Korloy's catalog you cant find them. However they are listed in TMX catalogs, and while searching eBay I noticed that some Tmx insert packs are listed as "made in Korea", and that triggered aha moment. Tmx is just a re-seller like Spi, so I'm pretty sure Korloy is making the inserts for Tmx, and somehow several people in China & Hong Kong are getting them and selling them.

I'm super pleased about the price as well, I got them delivered to my door for $56. Glacern wants $200 plus shipping.

 

[compsurge]

+1 on the hard-to-find-on-website-and-in-catalog Korloy inserts. I got some CCGT32.52 H01 for my lathe since I was so pleased with the SEHT1204 / SEHT43 X83 in my 3" Glacern face mill. I assume both are legitimate products - sometimes you never know if you have a counterfeit (my only fear from buying on eBay). I have lucked out so far at least. One thing that bothered me on close inspection is the packing did not stamp the box for the material type or put in feeds and speeds. The lathe inserts both had speeds and feeds present.

You can't complain with the absolute mirror finish the Korloys leave on aluminum though.

 

[zr8cnc]

I don't see why you feel the machines are not rigid enough as charter oaks is putting a 3hp motor on theirs. I have a PM45 CNC and I am considering a belt conversion and a 3hp motor.

I don't think the machine is rigid enough to really utilize 2+ hp. 3 hp puts you into the Wells Index, and small K&T ballpark. If Matt was taking suggestions, I'd recommend he drop the complexity of the gear head and go the brushless dc motor and pulley route like he did on the new pm25s. If that could be coupled with bearings that could get you into the 4k rpm range, he would have a pretty serious home shop machine.

 

[Dan_S]

+1 on the hard-to-find-on-website-and-in-catalog Korloy inserts. I got some CCGT32.52 H01 for my lathe since I was so pleased with the SEHT1204 / SEHT43 X83 in my 3" Glacern face mill.

My X83's Came yesterday, and 2 packs of the 21.51 CCGT AK came for the lathe today.

I assume both are legitimate products - sometimes you never know if you have a counterfeit (my only fear from buying on eBay).

I always buy from sellers with a high raking that sell a lot of product. My hope is that they would get a lot of negative complaints if they sold counterfeit stuff, or that the manufacture would put a stop to someone selling a high volume of counterfeits to protect the brands reputation.

I also assume, that this is just someone from Hong Kong, who is buying in bulk and has a really low profit margin. I've been told inserts are like diamonds, in that they have a huge markup, as in 2 to 5 hundred percent buy the time it gets to a retailer.

I don't see why you feel the machines are not rigid enough as charter oaks is putting a 3hp motor on theirs. I have a PM45 CNC and I am considering a belt conversion and a 3hp motor.

They have to put a larger motor on it when using a vfd to maintain a reasonable amount of power (using this term loosely) at the spindle.

The graph part way down this page shows what I mean.
http://www.pumpsandsystems.com/topics/pumps/motor-horsepower-torque-versus-vfd-frequency




What I meant, is that Imo none of the rf45 clones are rigid enough to have more than 1.5 or 2 hp at the spindle. Much more than that, and the column will start flexing and lead to poor tool life and a bad surface finish.