I will get a better look at it today. It was at my work and we had a safety audit on the machine shops. This time they audited all of the lathes not just the ones in the classroom labs for the students, so there was 4 being used by the tool room lab techs. Any lathe that does not have a shield with a shut down for the chuck had to be either converted or scrapped. This one was listed for disposal as the engineering estimate on the shield and shut down was over 3k. There was another one as well but it was much larger, I did not get to see the larger one. Newer ones that have a manufactures kit available are being converted to meet the safety requirements. It is not just a matter of making a shield and a switch work either they have to have safety certification and that's where most of the cost would have come in. It was a a take it now kind of deal, so I jumped on it. I do have experience with vfd's. So I will for sure be going that route in the coming months.
I had to change careers here last year and move to Calgary. I was very hesitant to do it, loss of wage, extra costs, and moving. But it has likely been one of the best things I have ever committed to, saying I do is on top of course. We still have our other house and my daughter is living in it. So I have my things spread between the two. Separated by about a 3hr drive. I will get some more pics up this morning as I get a chance to look in to the lathe more, it also came with some other tooling so I will look at that.
