Lathe on the way

You will be far happier with the D1-4. Back in 78 I took out a loan when I got to Japan to buy stereo equipment. The dollar was plunging vs the yen so even at the rates charged in that era, it worked out for me.

Did you pay for lift gate service? If you are going to use the truck, I'd have looked into non lift gate service and picking it up at the terminal where they have a forklift. That is what I did for my Jet 20" bandsaw.

The first thing is to have at least one friend that has moved things. Strapped to a pallet it likely isn't too tippy.

Slings and a wrecker sounds good to me. I moved a 12x36 but it was on a low trailer.

I doubt you have a big enough spindle bore to stick it through the head. You would also need a bushing to keep the far end of the stick from whipping.

Lock the table, mill top edge of tubing, rotate 90, ect. I'd set the bit to cut flush with edge of the vise jaw. That way when you rotate your part 90, you can index to jaw edge. If the part doesn't stick up high enough to mill w/o hitting jaw, put something under stock.

Good luck,

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Congratulations! This should be a lot better than the belt driven one -- as long as you manage to avoid crashes. (Belts are more forgiving of crashes.)

O.K. I got my 12x24 Clausing from the flat-bed high truck which delivered it (pre-assembled to the pedestal) to my pickup truck by sliding it down a ramp made from five 10' 2x4s bolted edge on to three cross-boards on the bottom. I then drove it up the driveway, backed up to the garage, and slid it down the same ramp to the floor.

I had no instructions (a used lathe, after all, but what I did was to jack up each end of the pallet and put cribbing under it -- first

I removed the pallet, pulled it clear, and rotated the lathe so the headstock was towards the column of the engine hoist, and lowered it onto the floor. This allowed the legs to straddle it. If that orientation had not been possible, I would have lowered it onto cribbing again, removed the engine hoist, and using a rolling floor jack, removed

Note that the 12x36" Jet which we got at work back around 1985 or so was brought in by professional riggers, but it was pre-assembled to its base, too. (The motor was in the base, IIRC, and lots of wiring in there, too. So it was brought in, the crate disassembled from around it, it was lifted clear of the pallet and that removed, too -- all by professionals.

The real worry was that it (and the Bridgeport clone) were being mounted on a raised computer type lab floor. The trick was to put the load bads over the supported intersections of the floor panels where there was a jack column.

You'll also prefer it to the Jacobs key type chuck, as long as you aren't using left-hand drill bits. I keep a Jacobs on an appropriate arbor for just that need. :-)

Hmm ... Either South Bend's or Atlas' _How to Run a Lathe_ will be good starters -- though they all assume belt driven lathes IIRC. But a lot of the principles are the same.

And for more serious, go for Moultrecht's _Machine Shop Practice_, which covers all machine tools. It is in two volumes, and will tell you about things which you don't even know to ask about once the time comes to find out about them.

I've not seen it, but I might expect it to be aimed for lighter machines.

The "manual" with the lathe will give you details about the lathe, but not instructions on how to use it.

BTW I would suggest that you retire the 4-station turret toolpost And instead get a BXA sized quick-change toolpost to put on there. If you've got the money, start with an Aloris starter set. Otherwise, go for a Phase-II set of the wedge style, not the piston style (more rigid and less chance of the locking arm swinging into the path of the chuck jaws). If you go Phase-II, remove the 8mm setscrews which hold the tools into the holders and replace them with ones from a box of US made ones (A box of 100 is quite cheap compared to the price you would pay at Home Despot on a per-each basis. The supplied setscrews are likely to split or round out and become very difficult to loosen unless the Chinese screws have improved in quality since I got mine. The rest of the toolpost and holders has been quite satisfactory.

Hmm ... I think that your D1-4 won't hold 2" square tubing through the spindle, and that is way too much to stick out unsupported from the chuck -- even if you can open a 4-jaw far enough to let it seat on the spindle nose.

Make a "spider". A round tube large enough to accept the diagonal of the workpiece, with set screws coming in from four sides to center it, and with a surface free of setscrews wide enough for the standard steady to hold. If you want to get fancy, mill a square hole in it, then grip from the inside with a 4-jaw chuck (figuring out how to center in in the process) and turn an OD to accept the steady fingers.

Arrggghhh! You're going to stand it on end? How are you going to support the upper end? Same problem as you would have holding it in the lathe chuck. Too long for its cross-section. You'll try to compensate by cranking the milling vise tighter and probably crush the square tubing to rectangular or worse.

Mount it sideways in the vise, mill one side of each (plus a little over half-way through the other two sides, then set up a stop on the table so you can mount each piece to line up with the previous cut when you do the final cut.

Or -- if you have a horizontal mill, put a 5" milling cutter of perhaps 1/8" thickness or so in and cut through the whole end in one pass. (yes, those old horizontal spindle milling machines still have their uses. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

======================= Welcome to the wonderful world of machining!

A word of advice -- before you power up your lathe, disassembly it as far as you dare, clean and relube. Asian machine tools are infamous for coming complete with foundry sand. I suggest using paint [*NOT* lacquer] thinner to clean with. This is "varsol." =======================

Start with the cheap stuff first. one free source is

------------ The two volumes of Moltrecht will give you a more detailed overview of the manual machining process than Milne.

------------------------------ Magic solution is a 4 jaw chuck, a steady rest and a "cathead" An old fashioned but very useful tool. You will need a "bridge" made out of an old hacksaw blade to center the tube with your drop indicator.

------- The older lathe books will have details on the bridge and pump staffs/wigglers. The work arounds and hints are one of the reasons the reprints are so valuable. Click on

Feel free to email me direct.

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

Could you lift one end at a time and put blocks under the pallet?

My engine hoist has a small range of load and boom extension where the jack is strong enough but the center of gravity is near or forward of the wheels and the crane will either tip immediately or is unstable enough to tip when the load swings. Luckily I found this out by calculation when reconstructing the missing boom load chart. You can weigh the mast end and measure from there to the hook-end wheels to find how many foot-pounds of moment arm the hook will support without tipping. The problem of course is knowing the load's weight. If you lift the load an inch or two and then heave up on the mast you'll see if it's close to tipping.

When I have to move something heavy I lower the load onto timbers placed across the engine hoist's base and roll it like a pallet jack.

I've attached a trailer tongue jack to the upright mast and added extra wheels and a handle like on a pallet jack, which makes the hoist much easier to muscle around on dirt and lets me tow it with my tractor.

If you set up an angle plate as a stop for the other end, you can turn the piece in the vise and mill each top edge. As long as the angle plate is square to the table it will stop the tubing at the same place each time regardless of where the high spot touches it.

Jim Wilkins

The 12x gear head is a very capable lathe. Good bang for the buck. You should be pretty happy.

That will work, but there is not much reason to get lift gate service if you are doing half the work. As another poster said, it is best to just go to the terminal and have the machine fork lifted into your truck. Avoids having to schedule and wait for delivery, too.

A 2-ton engine hoist will handle the lathe very nicely. You can move the carriage around for balance, though I used a load balancer and two straps. The lathe did not tend to tip with the backsplash on, but wanted to tip without it.

I cut away parts of the pallet and crate to get the hoist around mine.

I like the Rohm keyless chucks.

Definitely go through "Machine Shop Essentials" by Marlow.

You can put the square tubing inside round tubing or pipe, secured and centered with screws, then hold the round in the chuck and steady.

Have fun! Alan

Don,

That part bothered me just a little, but it's not a good idea to crash things into machines anyway. It has a "fiber gear" to avoid total loses. They do not sell it online because they had problems with people buying the wrong one. Wanting to cash in on the extra 10% off for web orders, I figured I'd wait. However, I will get one to have on hand.

I think I would call for help before trying that.

That makes sense, and I will probably end up doing that. Did you start out with a pry-bar to get it off the ground, or is there a slicker way?

Understood about the headstock next to the column of the hoist - that is what I plan to use to get the lathe onto the stand (I hope). It should work, assuming my mill is any example.

I can largely picture that, but what is the goal? If you can't straddle the lathe with the legs, would not want to keep it on cribbing and/or just lift it to your truck? Or, are you simply giving instructions for getting back down in that case?

Once the truck does its part, this will be on a garage floor. I am not sure I would want to try it on raised floor =:0

I really enjoy my Jacobs chuck, and will probably end up buying another one to live on a 3MT arbor - later.

True, but it still has been useful at times.

It is actually pretty good - one of the best I have seen on a Chinese machine.

I believe that to be excellent advice. It sounds very familiar from my earlier research on this purchase. Given what the IRS is going to do to me in a few weeks, it will have to wait. I almost didn't buy the lathe to be honest.

Sounds like good practice.

It worked very nicely once before. Making pairs of these things, I clamped the ends together and took light cuts. In fairness, those were a little shorter than the parts for the current job.

To clarify, I would bring the stop into contact with the lower end of the first cut, tighten, and then move the part, right? My usual stops would probably trick me; they work nicely, but always seem to move a little when tightened - not a problem the way I use them. However, a v-block and a parallel or something held in place with clamps should do it.

Not long ago I saw a picture of a Swedish(??) vertical/horizontal mill. Interesting looking thing.

THANKS!!

Bill

...

If you have a pallet jack, it's fairly easy to go up a lip like that, as follows: Drop pallet, pull jack back say 4", then lift. Move the pallet forward until the front wheels hit the lip. Drop the pallet, push the jack up over the lip, raise the load, go forward until back wheel hits the lip, drop pallet, pull jack out, move jack to opposite side of pallet, etc.

-jiw

George,

I won't even try to put comments inline: there's too much great stuff in your reply to do it justice. I will check out the references. At first glance, the cathead is pretty much what I thought might be needed. AFAIK, the machine comes with 3- and 4-jaw chucks.

You mention disassembly for cleaning, and you are not the first to mention casting sand. That is a scary thought for a splash-lubricated head stock! How far would you go? I recognize that you would probably be in a position to go farther than I should be willing to go, so perhaps I should ask what you would NOT touch???

With respect to moving the machine, what about the motor? Removing it might make it a little easier to handle, and if you want me to take it off for cleaning, perhaps I should get a head start??

Thanks!

Bill

Jim,

Don's reply got me thinking about that. IIRC, my hoist's boom will not over-extend, though if it starts to tip with the load on the ground, I'm not sure it's a big risk??

I have used the same trick. Once the base is attached and it comes time to slide it into place, I might prefer to keep it just off the ground; I look forward to being that far along.

My goal is to get nowhere near dirt on this move :)

Thanks!

Bill

James,

Interesting! I do not have one, but will probably get one eventually. For now, I _think_ I would rather hold out for a load positioner, especially with some storage options I have in mind. Of course, a pallet jack can handle a mill. Call me overly cautious, but if I end up with ton of mill in my garage, I want to be able to move it in an emergency. My favorite example scenario is a tree limb falls through the roof, and the mill needs to move either out of harm's way or to allow emergency repair access. In Florida, we think of such things.

Bill

============ One dodge is to use your lathe as a horizontal mill.

fabricate a block to hold a HSS lathe tool to the face plate. This is your fly cutter.

Remove the compound and rig up a way to hold the square tube on the cross slide. Use the cross slide to move the tube in and out past the fly cutter. An angle iron with a spacer underneath should be adequate loction. May be a little "fiddly" to set up, but cheap.

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

George,

I plan try some things like that. One of the reasons I wanted to skip the threaded spindle machine is that I realized I would want to do a fair number of interrupted cuts. My mill-drill serves me well, but facing plates can be a pain - I have to really stay on top of the vertical feed (the lock is not enough) to get good results. There isn't much else that it does or fails to do that bothers me. I realize I will almost certainly end up buying a bigger mill some day, but see no need to rush into it. So far, I suspect I might want a baby bridgie with a riser block, but I have yet to find that :(

Whether or not dumping my facing work on the lathe is a good idea, it will be a good addition to my shop, and it is past time for me to learn my way around one. My hope is that this will be my "second" lathe, meaning I hopefully skipped the starter machine and got something that will meet my long-term needs for a lathe.

Bill

What I do to tip my trailer, is I keep it hitched to the truck and drive the rear wheels of my truck on a ramp (or just 2x10s).

Ahem. Counterbalance on the ram end of the engine hoist?

I plan to cut a small chunk of plywood into a platform to fit over the legs of mine at that end, and then stack bricks or concrete blocks, two 5-gallon buckets full of sand, or other 'found weight' as needed to achieve stability.

If you have barbell weights, all it would take is a chunk of pipe to slide them onto, big mouse clip and a flatwasher to keep them there.

-->--

The original load chart may have considered tipping, but I only had the max load with the boom fully in to work backwards from.

The best counterweight would be the tractor if I can figure out a way to mount a fixed hitch coupler that doesn't interfere with the trailer jack and its swivel handle. Otherwise it's only a problem when I help the neighbors unload a welder or such off a truck (my stuff isn't that heavy) and several of the guys can just stand on it rather than watching, drinking beer and wisecracking.

----------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for getting me thinking. A rope from the mast top to the trailer hitch coupler that's already on the handle end will be enough to keep the hoist from tipping and it won't interfere with manhandling the hoist into position. That fixed coupler would still be useful to allow the tractor to back it up without jackknifing.

Jim Wilkins

Bill, I can tell you that about 1 year ago my younger brother took delivery of the same lathe (12 x 26 gap bed) from HF at their store about 20 miles away. He got it on a Friday night and after work, he and I took it off of his truck by hand... We did it by taking it apart. The motor, the ways, the head stock, etc. It was still very heavy, but us two 40 year old lads did it, but it was heavy.

What followed next was a full on disassembly of all parts of that machine. Every part was taken apart, cleaned a polished. It took about 4 weekends worth of work. We used solvents etc. It was surprising, to say the least, how much grit was in the machine, the head stock being the worst. All told, we measured just under 3/4's of a cup of grit. What we did was to filter all the solvents and old oils etc and collect the grit.... My guess is that the lathe would not have run for a month, if we had left all of that crud in and on the machine. We also were able to correct a couple of gears that were not aligned so great.

A year latter, with a fair amount of use now, the lathe is still running strong and the original tolerances are holding just fine. I would consider this lathe to be more of a lathe kit, then a finished product, ready to run!!!! But once its all cleaned up and put back together, WOW is it nice. Never crashed a tool, never had an issue of any type. All told a great lathe.

bob

Good!

If you have a spare on hand, you are less likely to need it. :-)

I had help from the driver sliding it into the pickup (3/4 ton,

A pry-bar plus a length of 2x4 acting as a longer pry-bar. But it was easier to get hooked into the upper layer of the pallet for the first motion.

I would have used the engine hoist from the start for unloading from the pickup -- except that I had to unload the pickup to drive over to a friend's place to borrow the engine hoist. I've since acquired my own. :-)

Good.

It had to be lifted to unbolt the pallet. Once it was in the air, the choices were to lower it onto the legs of the hoist (counter productive) or onto cribbing so the hoist could be removed.

We had no choice -- since the work needed to remove not only that room's raised floor, but the one before it through which it came would have been a major problem -- especially with the conduit and plumbing below the floor. At least there was a nice long ramp before the first room which would serve as the first test of whether it would support what was being moved.

Wait until you've done a few projects with the Rohm keyless chuck. (I do presume that the Rohm is keyless and the Jacobs is keyed, though both make both styles. And I have a nice Jacobs keyless on my drill press (which came with a 5/8" or 3/4" clone of a Jacobs chuck -- always too big for metalworking with the slowest speed available from the spindle. :-)

For that matter, I learned a lot from the manual for my Unimat SL-1000, including tricks which I have not seen documented in manuals for larger machines. :-)

Hmm ... a significant improvement from one for the Jet from around 1980-85.

O.K. So keep your eyes open for sales for the Phase-II wedge style set. I got mine from such a sale -- choosing to pay more for the wedge style over the piston style.

If you had two side by side, and firmly clamped that way, it would be a lot better than one at a time.

I would just make a cut through a bit over half of the height of each one not worrying about the end stop then. Then rotate one piece 90 degrees, so there is both a top and a bottom section machined together. Set the stop to press on a bottom section of the machined area, lock it, and then move the X-axis to bring the edge of the end mill just barely contact with the end. IIRC, cigarette rolling papers are supposed to be good for this -- moisten one, and stick it on the end of the machined surface, and bring the X-axis in until the endmill just whisks the paper away -- you are then within 0.001".

Now -- lock the X-axis, stop the spindle, crank the Y-axis clear in such a direction so you will be doing conventional milling not climb milling when you bring the mill back into contact, loosen the vise, and rotate the workpiece so the long un-milled part is on top and the long machined part is on the bottom in contact with the work stop. Tighten the vise, mill through the un-machined work (with a little overlap), loosen the vise, crank the Y-axis back to where it was before, and clamp the next half-done workpiece against the stop. Repeat until all are done on that end. Then carefully cut to final length on one side of the other end of all parts (perhaps setting the stop at the already milled in now if all are to be the same length), and machine each one top flip bottom and on to the next.

Yes -- those are nice machines, and I wish that I had one, and sufficient electric power to run one properly.

You're welcome.

Enjoy, DoN.

From what I have read, the gear-head machines have been made with more attention to such matters than the belt-driven ones from the same source -- and the larger lathes better made than the smaller ones. All that extra money pays for more than just more cast iron. :-)

I would suggest taking apart and checking the compound and the cross slide. If those are well done, you probably have pretty good chances with the rest. Maybe take apart and check the tailstock as well.

Taking apart the gear-head headstock to sufficient level of detail is a major undertaking.

Enjoy, DoN.