My Precision Mathews PM1340GT Arrival

Wow,

Mike Awesome write up, I like your JOG feature...will probably have to add that. Congrats, I just got mine up on the stand, wont be home till next week so you"ll probably be making chips before I get mine clean up.

Danny
 
Thanks Danny. I am trying to have it operational by the weekend. It arrived yesterday morning around 10:00 am, I had a couple of errands to run before I was able to start on it and I had it completely wired and set in place by 9:00 last night.

Hopefully tonight I can play with the VFD and start cleaning and put my shop back together. I had to move everything around to get it in as it is clear to the front of my shop. I had to move the motorcycle lifts, welding table, bandsaws and now I can put everything back in place.

Mike.
 
Congrats Mike! I am SOOOOOO envious of your new lathe. Looks like the wait was worth it.

Jay
 
Glad it's all working-out for you, Mike.

Be safe and have fun...


Ray
 
Don't be too concerned about your QC box dripping oil. Even the "sealed" ones still LEAK anyway. Why not put a shallow baking pan under it,rather than a pad,which will get messy? Bridgeport milling machines also have a "total loss" oiling system in their spindles. You put oil in the top,and it comes slowly out of the bottom.

About the dials on the crossfeed that show the TRUE amount of metal removed from the diameter: When I was young,they called those type dials "continental system",and the others "American"(where you always had to divide by 1/2 to get the amount of movement you really wanted on the crossfeed. I'll take the continental system any day. My HLVH,though made in 1964,has continental dials on it,for which I am grateful.
 
OK, update from last nights work.

I mentioned that I was getting tired the night before after working on it all day so I am using that as my excuse.:whistle: I got home from work yesterday and again, I was 92.4% sure that I was 100% correct on my wiring. I programmed the VFD and fired her up. I did have to tweak some of the parameters in the VFD to my liking so I spent about 45-minutes or so "fine tuning" the VFD and playing with it. I then hit my JOG function that I was so proud of and nothing. Went through my written and scribbled on wiring schematic that I sketched out previously and everything appeared to be correct even the couple of things that I had to change on the fly when wiring it.

Out came the voltmeter and BINGO, found my problem. When I was assembling my diodes the night before, I used a connector that the diode barely fit into to not only protect the diode but also not allow any non-insulated portion to be able to touch anything and short out. I assembled the diodes on the bench and then wrote with a Sharpie the diode symbol so I would know anode from cathode when installing them into the electrical panel. Well dummy me, wrote the symbol correctly on the connector, however I installed the diode backwards in the connector itself.:banghead: Therefore the 24VDC was not getting to my toggle switch for the JOG function. I cut it out, LABELED IT CORRECTLY and reinstalled it. Everything worked perfectly.

I then commenced the joyous task of cleaning all of the cosmoline from the lathe. Actually it really was not as bad as I thought it would be. I used some WD-40 in a spray bottle and would spray some on a paper towel and with a little scrubbing it came right off. The scraping and the ground ways on this lathe are top shelf all the way. The more I cleaned the more happy I became with my choice in lathes. Also the smoother everything was moving once all of the cosmoline was coming off. After a couple of hours of cleaning I hit all of the oil ports with some lube and lubed the ways and all the movement became even better. The carriage, tailstock, cross slide and compound movements are very fluid and smooth. The dials move very nicely on the handles, the chuck works great and the external gears run smoother.
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A few dots of cleaner/cosmoline mix splattered up the back splash that need to be wiped off. I know it is going to get dirty over time but I want to keep my new purchase as clean as possible as long as possible.
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Overview of how she looks in her new home.
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Once everything was cleaned I ran the lathe in each gear for 10+ minutes or so to break in the gearbox. While the lathe was running, I began putting my shop back together. I had to move my welding bench, motorcycle lifts and a few other items back into position and a general overall cleanup of the shop as it was driving me nucking futs having everything in such dis-organization.

Once the machine had run for around an hour and a half, a gear at a time I decided to break out my Starret machinist level and dial her in. I got it dead nuts level in both planes.
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Also while it was running I cut a piece of neoprene/rubber material that I had for the top of the headstock.
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Also while it was running/breaking in I took a piece of .125" 6061 aluminum and made a small bracket to hold my two drill chucks and live center and bolted it to the back of the splashguard.
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On my previous machine I just had my toolholders sitting in the chip tray within fairly easy reach and although they were ok there, I hated that they kept getting covered in swarf and when switching out toolholders I had to brush the chips off prior to installing on the QCTP. However, if didn't bother me enough to do anything about it though so I just used it as is. Well I wanted to do something a little nice on this lathe and keep them out of the swarf and chip. I had watched a youtube video a few months back where a guy used a piece of Unistrut attached to his backsplash for the toolholders to store on. I thought it was a great idea and they all looked like they were in easy reach. Well you know what they say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery so I decided to copy it.

I am going to run and grab some Unistrut and some nut plates today and install a toolholder on the backsplash. Then hopefully I will make my first cuts on the lathe either tonight or first thing in the morning. I am going to chuck up my test bar and see how true this thing is. The sad part is I won't be able to use my new Dorian toolpost or Aloris toolholders until my mill shows up because I need to mill the "T" for the toolpost. We have been unable to use any machines at my place of employment for the past couple of months as we have a new boss and won't allow that any longer.

Mike.
 
Don't be too concerned about your QC box dripping oil. Even the "sealed" ones still LEAK anyway. Why not put a shallow baking pan under it,rather than a pad,which will get messy? Bridgeport milling machines also have a "total loss" oiling system in their spindles. You put oil in the top,and it comes slowly out of the bottom.

About the dials on the crossfeed that show the TRUE amount of metal removed from the diameter: When I was young,they called those type dials "continental system",and the others "American"(where you always had to divide by 1/2 to get the amount of movement you really wanted on the crossfeed. I'll take the continental system any day. My HLVH,though made in 1964,has continental dials on it,for which I am grateful.

Thanks George, good to know. I didn't realize they had a certain name for them. It must be the "continental system" that I am used to and my new lathe has the "American system" where the dial is marked in total amount of material removed from the diameter of the material.

I was talking with one of my co-workers who is heavy into building guns. He told me that his brother-in-law that does all of his gunsmithing/machining didn't know that lathes came any other way than the "American system" as all of the lathes he had used were that way.

Mike.
 
About the dials on the crossfeed that show the TRUE amount of metal removed from the diameter: When I was young,they called those type dials "continental system",and the others "American"(where you always had to divide by 1/2 to get the amount of movement you really wanted on the crossfeed. I'll take the continental system any day. My HLVH,though made in 1964,has continental dials on it,for which I am grateful.

I want my dials to tell me how far I've moved the tool. Amount of metal removed from the diameter with the compound at 90 degrees is not always the number of interest. When it is I can divide by two in my head (but I really should have worked it all out in advance anyway).
 
I want my dials to tell me how far I've moved the tool. Amount of metal removed from the diameter with the compound at 90 degrees is not always the number of interest. When it is I can divide by two in my head (but I really should have worked it all out in advance anyway).

I can't honestly say which method I "prefer" as the only one I am familiar with is the "continental method". I have not used one until now that tells me the total diameter removed, "American method". I may like it better in the end, however, I won't have a definitive answer to that until after I get some time on the new lathe. It does make sense though the more I think about it that it is generally total diameter that you working with.

Time will tell.

Mike.
 
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