PM 728 Mill- Issues and upgrades.

rwm

rwm

Robert
H-M Lifetime Diamond Member
Joined
Mar 25, 2013
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After waiting for the DRO to become available I pulled the trigger on a PM 728.

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I made a stand to get one of my cabinets under it.

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Engine hoist in my crowded little shop:
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And finally home:
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There are a lot of nice things about this machine. The tram out of the box was pretty close.
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A few bumps with a dead blow and it was right on. The motor and variable speed control are awesome and very smooth.
The table motion is reasonably smooth with minimal backlash.

The only issue so far is the fine feed for the quill. The fine feed turns a worm that engages a worm wheel that runs on the quill feed shaft. On my machine, the fine feed knob binds considerably at one segment for every rotation of the worm wheel. There seems to be an engagement error. I have worked with tech support at PM and they are sending me a new worm wheel to try. Hopefully that will solve the issue.

Robert
 
Looks like a sweet new mill! (just slightly envious)
May your chips be easy and many!
Cheers
 
The other really annoying thing about this mill is the power board beeps for 10 sec after you turn it off. I presume it is alarming for power failure? Not a helpful feature. There is no way I can live with that. I suppose I will open up the board and remove the piezo speaker. Kind of like my Schnauzer does with stuffed animals?
Robert
 
Congrats, nice machine! Let the chips fly!

I was looking at that exact mill for a week or two, almost bought one, then decided to go with the idea that you need to get something bigger than you think you will need, ended up ordering a 833TV.
 
Trust me; I would have gone bigger if I had the space. There is a BP in my future with this machine becoming CNC. Charlotte real estate prices are the limiting factor.
Robert
 
I like the chip shield. That's a great idea!
 
Looks like some extra space in the front room there :encourage:
 
Awesome man! Machines in the house? H3ll yeah! I'd stick our bed in the garage if my wife was cool with the equipment in the house. You should have seen her face when she came home and the GSXR600 was in the living room.....actually it wasn't funny at all.
 
New speed control knob. Much better look, although my knurling is not what I would like to be.

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You may have noticed I flipped the face plate around so I am just using the bare metal side. I like the look much better. If you can't figure out what the buttons do without the labels you probably should not be using power tools.
Robert
 
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