PM1236T Installation in Basement

[Ischgl99]

I recently purchased a PM1236T and brought it into my basement through a Bilco entryway door and thought I would document it here for anyone else considering such a move.

I had a 9x20 lathe for many years and wanted to upgrade it, so sold it a few years ago planning on purchasing a replacement, but life got in the way and I finally got the new lathe last December. Following is a series of photos of how I got it from my garage and into the basement. I also built my own stand for it instead of purchasing the PM one.

Here is the customary picture of the crate as it arrived. The driver from ABF was great and moved it into my garage on his pallet jack.

I called a fellow member of a business association I am in to see how much it would cost his moving company to move the lathe from my garage and into the basement. I’m glad I was sitting down when I got that estimate, minimum charge $800 and it could be more. That would be a hard no!
I moved my Burke Millrite into my basement by placing the main casting on a skid and hiring a local towing company to use their flatbed to lower it down the stairs at the Bilco entry door. That worked well, so I decided to the the same with the lathe. Since the lathe was already on a pallet that looked suitable with some modifications, first order of business was get it off the lower shipping pallet. My engine hoist was not wide enough to get in far enough to lift it, so I used my car floor jack to get underneath and the cut out pallet piece by piece and put up on blocks so I could make my modifications.

Once the main pallet was up on blocks, I moved the cross risers from the bottom to the top to maintain the strength they added to the pallet and giving me runners on the bottom that could be used to when sliding it down the stairs.

The carriage bolt heads were sitting proud of the bottom runners and I was concerned that would make it more difficult to slide, so I used a spade drill sharpened on the backside to counterbore the holes by inserting the drill from the bottom and then drilling from the top. This worked FAR better than I anticipated. It’s nice when something works better than you imagine.

I was concerned there would be too much stress for the bottom runners when the skid tips from the end of the flatbed to the stairs, so I added some wood between the skid and the lathe in the center to give it more rigidity. Apparently I did not take a picture of that, but imagine blocking about midway along the lathe length that closes the gap between the lathe and skid.

Next post will have pictures of bringing it into the basement.

 

[macardoso]

I brought my 12x36 down the basement. Headstock, tailstock, and carriage all came off to reduce weight.

 

[Just for fun]

Looking forward to your progress.

 

[Ischgl99]

I brought my 12x36 down the basement. Headstock, tailstock, and carriage all came off to reduce weight.

I was thinking of doing that, but I would still have a lathe bed weighing in at 300ish pounds I would need to get downstairs. As well as the time to disassemble and reassemble.

 

[Ischgl99]

I hired a flatbed wrecker to bring the lathe from my garage to the basement. Since it was January, the ground was nice and frozen, so no ruts to repair in the spring!

The first picture shows the lathe being pulled up onto the bed. I removed the motor and the gear cover so the strap would not be pushing against anything that could get broken. The strap is wrapped around the headstock base.

I tied a rope to the other end of the lathe in case I needed to steer it down the stairs, that came in handy.

The basement entry is concrete formed steps, to enable the lathe to slide down the stairs easily, I placed 3/4" plywood over the steps with some wood braces at the top to hold it in place.

This is the flatbed lined up with the entry and at maximum angle. At this point I was busier than a one armed paper hanger, so don't have any more pictures until it is in the basement. The driver was able to walk the lathe off the end of the flatbed and then once it was about 2/3 of the way off, it began to tip onto the plywood. As it was descending the stairs, I used the rope tied to the end to keep it in the middle to get through the bottom door frame.

Once it was at the bottom of the stairs, I placed a 1" bar under the lathe at the tail stock end and used my engine hoist to lift it onto a dolly. I needed to add a couple layers of 2x6 to lift it up high enough to clear the hoist outriggers. Once it was on the first dolly, it was a simple matter of pulling it into the basement and placing another dolly for the head stock end. I again used the floor jack to place the skid on cinder blocks so that I could get the lathe off the skid.

At this point, I was able to lift the lathe, turn 90 degrees and place on dollies between the outrigger legs.

Now I am able to move it to the other end of my shop and place on the stand I built.

It took about a half hour from when the wrecker arrived to when it was in my basement. That was $125 well spent. I decided against asking friends or my son to help move it down there since I did not want to put them at risk of injury by trying to do this ourselves.

My next post will be the stand I built for this.

 

[Tipton1965]

Looking good! Interested in seeing the stand you built.

 

[7milesup]

That is awesome. Love your thinking on using the flatbed.

Following along.

 

[Ischgl99]

The PM stand is a bit pricey and I wasn’t sure if that was the design I wanted, so I decided to make my own. I liked the spanning beam designs I came across, but not being able to weld, I decided to make mine out of laminated pieces of plywood. I did the engineering calcs and a laminated plywood beam 4” by 10” wide should have a similar rigidity to the c channel used by others I saw such as David Best’s design. I have to admit, there was a pucker factor the first time I placed the lathe on the stand and I kept the engine hoist slightly loose for a bit to make sure nothing cracked.

The first picture is the lathe on the stand as it sits today. I’m short at 5’-6” so I was able to set the height exactly where I wanted it, on the second try... I was comparing several designs and apparently when I settled on this one, I forgot to factor in the beam on top of the side supports, so the lathe was 4” too high. On the bright side, I got some extra experience with rigging! I took the lathe back off the stand and cut 4” off the bottom and now it is just where it needs to be.

The legs have adjustable machinery leveling pads under each leg. I routed a groove on the leg bottom and epoxied a half inch thick threaded pad about 2”x2” for the leveling pads to screw into.

The legs are laminated plywood as well with the top cross beam sitting on the legs with a center tongue glued into a groove in the cross beam. There is stretcher bolted to the bottom of the legs to prevent the legs from splaying out. The right and left legs are kept from racking by the plywood shelf the chip pan is sitting on one along the back. These are screwed into the legs.

The spanning beam is bolted through the cross beam on each side. Before putting the lathe on the stand, I tried to see if there would be any movement and it is rock solid.

Here is a picture of the spanning beam glue up. I glued three sections of 3-4 pieces and then glued them together. I used boards and clamps to keep the sections as even as possible and then when it was dry ran it through my thickness planer to get the top and bottom flat. I filled in the voids on the top side with Bondo and then painted it.

That’s the stand. It seems to be working well. I originally wanted the chip pan between the lathe and the beam, but the coolant drain hole interferes and I would have had to cut the beam to get that to work. I didn’t want to weaken it, so it sits below the beam until I can come up with an alternative idea. I will be moving my machining equipment to a different part of my basement so that I can better isolate it from my woodworking equipment. That will be a project for warmer weather so I can seal the floor in that section before moving everything.

I made a number of changes to the electrical system, this is a three phase unit and I am powering it by a vfd. I will go into some detail on what I did for that as well.

 

[Ischgl99]

That is awesome. Love your thinking on using the flatbed.

Following along.

Thanks, it really made the move easy, and they apparently get these kinds of calls occasionally, so there was no convincing needed to accept the job. He also said this could have also been done with a winch truck, maybe for the next piece of equipment

 

[9t8z28]

This is exactly how I got my lathe in my basement! Nice job!