G0602 Vs. G0752 Variable Speed worth it?

BroncoSquid

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I have been looking for a small Lathe to go with my small Mill (Rockwell 21-100) for about a year now. I have sort of settled on the Grizzly 10X22. I am a complete novice other than reading books and playing with the mill.
My question is, is the variable speed option worth the $350? Or am I better off with the G0602 and a quick change tool post?
:nervous:
 
I went with the g0602

I do want variable speed one day but i did the math and i can buy a good frequency drive and convert it cheaper my self and have a much higher quality motor to boot .

But then i also live in the rust belt and second hand three phase motors are dirt cheap in my part of the world

I also considered the speed range of the lathe how grizzly has it set up and when i do mine id like to get the low end a good bit slower then the variable speed version is capeable of going
 
I worry about Chinese electronics. I'd get the separate VFD because if anything goes wrong,I'll bet you won't be able to get a spare part in a few years from Grizzly. That's the way it is these days. Even Sears used to guarantee spare parts for 10 years. No more. With a separate VFD you can easily replace the box without defacing the lathe.

I bought a Jet variable speed wet grinder with built in variable speed. It worked a few hours and went dead. A few DEALERS told me those often are dead out of the box new!! After a major hassle with Jet,they sent me a new printed circuit board. When I went to install it,I found out the push on connecters were literally as thin as aluminum beer cans. Maybe thinner. When the assembly person pushed them on,they'd crack,soon losing contact. I soldered the cracked connector and the grinder worked again,till it went dead again. A friend GAVE me a Tormek wet wheel grinder,which is a much more expensive machine,so I haven't bothered to get into the Jet again. I should have soldered ALL the connecters.

Something like this shows how fragile Chinese electronic stuff is. That is why I'd opt for a separate VFD that I CAN replace down the road. If your lathe just stops working,with the built in unit,you may have some major gutting to do to get rid of it. Then,you'll have a silly looking built in speed control on your lathe that no longer works,while you reach for the VFD.
 
I worry about Chinese electronics. I'd get the separate VFD because if anything goes wrong,I'll bet you won't be able to get a spare part in a few years from Grizzly. That's the way it is these days. Even Sears used to guarantee spare parts for 10 years. No more. With a separate VFD you can easily replace the box without defacing the lathe.

I bought a Jet variable speed wet grinder with built in variable speed. It worked a few hours and went dead. A few DEALERS told me those often are dead out of the box new!! After a major hassle with Jet,they sent me a new printed circuit board. When I went to install it,I found out the push on connecters were literally as thin as aluminum beer cans. Maybe thinner. When the assembly person pushed them on,they'd crack,soon losing contact. I soldered the cracked connector and the grinder worked again,till it went dead again. A friend GAVE me a Tormek wet wheel grinder,which is a much more expensive machine,so I haven't bothered to get into the Jet again. I should have soldered ALL the connecters.

Something like this shows how fragile Chinese electronic stuff is. That is why I'd opt for a separate VFD that I CAN replace down the road. If your lathe just stops working,with the built in unit,you may have some major gutting to do to get rid of it. Then,you'll have a silly looking built in speed control on your lathe that no longer works,while you reach for the VFD.

Precisely why I backed off buying a Chinese mill stuffed to the gills with electronics. It had gobs of features but I don't believe they are designing the electronics to last much longer than the 1 year warranty.
 
Like most machine decisions, it depends on what you want to do with the lathe. The belt/pulley system turns a bit fast for a lot of uses. Mild steel with HSS tooling tops out around 2.5" - cobalt and carbide will go higher. You'd be down to half that or more for alloy or stainless. For free machining aluminum, you could go up to 7 inches or so.

I am happy with my 602 at this point. It was at the limit of affordability when I got it. I am now getting a bigger mill and may do more work in steel and other harder metals, so I may be forced to do something about the low speed limit in the future. So with the clarity of hindsight, I would have done more begging and had the 752.

Here is the trade-off for variable speed drive:

The 752 is designed with all of the vfd components in the machines envelope. Grizzly sels machines that are a step up in the Chinese quality hierarchy, so it will probably serve trouble free long enough to justify the $350. The downside is the potential lack of long term parts supply. This would be at least partially mitigated by being able to replace the drive and/or the motor from other sources.

Converting the 602 to VFD allows flexibility, if you are comfortable with electrical design and construction. Drop-in metric compatible motors are available, sometimes even on sale. There is a verity of single to three phase vfds on the market with all sorts of features, The downside is that the vfd will reside outboard to the lathe unless you cut up the front panel and rewire it. It will usually cost $400 or more for the parts plus whatever you value your labor.

Going back and do it again, I would do option 1. And because I didn't, I will eventually do option 2
 
My experience with Chinese made electronics makes me believe that, like you, they are at best, designed to last close to the warranty as possible. At worst to just getting out of the place they are made. Had a Chinese made machine where I use to work that had three electronic boards replaced( under warranty ) in 6 months. Probably would have been more, but it took 3 weeks or more to get them after failure. Boss did replace it with a better unit before it failed again.
 
My experience with the mini lathe and mini mill electronics suggests that there is nothing technically wrong with the Chinese controls, the main problem is the manufacturer's paranoia against copyright infringement by other factories in SE Asia so there is little or no official repair information out there, and we are left to reverse engineer most of their products in order to repair them.

The type of repairs I have seen are about 20% factory defects , about 50% abuse and 30% external surges and spikes. Since the latter two are preventable I would submit that the controls aren't that bad - In fact I see almost the same percentages with the KB control boards made in Florida. FWIW, KB doesn't provide service information or parts either and I can't blame them, since I have seen a Chinese copy of a KB board in my shop !

-Pete
 
one more thing to consider , a vfd also adds a few features you do not get with the go752
one is soft starts another is being able to program in braking .
the braking doesnt seem like a very important feature up until the first time you need it ... a good easy example is metric threading to a shoulder , having the ability to brake the machine instead of just guessing how far it will coast sure would be nice .
as would being able to add that braking to your e stop button for an emergancy
 
I have had several Grizzly machines. Had 2 16" lathes. I bought 2 Taiwan made 16x40's in 1986. One for the shop,and 1 for my home shop. We did not use the one at work all the time,not even every day,or perhaps every week. We made all kinds of tools for Williamsburg museum. We wore the one at work out in 10 years. Actually,that included fixing the carriage several times,and the motor blew out. Had to replace that-the Chinese do not dip their armatures in varnish,so the motor arced across the bearings and blew out. The electricians said the motor was crap.

My lathe at home hasn't been used much. I do mostly small work,and have a Hardinge HLVH that I use all the time. I'm still waiting for the dreaded motor to blow out.

The lathe is quite accurate,but I would not EVER recommend it for use in any kind of production shop. And,this lathe is TAIWAN MADE,not Chinese.

Jon,my journeyman,has a 12" belt drive Grizzly that they took 2 years to get parts for. His QC gear box went bad. Now,the lathe won't feed. We looked at it,and the gear that runs in the rack is all dubbed over. I was going to fix that for him(as there are NO parts at all now). However,we found the rack itself is terribly chewed up,with teeth missing in several places. The rack seems like it might be made of cast iron. I would not be surprised. The Chinese seem to cast every thing they can.

The rack on his lathe is also just plain too SMALL. It looks like it is 7/16" square. And,this on a 12" lathe.

So where am I going with this????? I'd not be so sure Grizzly is a STEP UP from any one else's Chinese stuff.
 
Thank you all for the replies. I see I have much more research to do before I lay down my hard earned cash. Fortunately I have 7 more months in my deployment to do so. I see VFD's are one of the things I need to get smart on.
 
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