New Toy, er Tool

CONGRATS JD! What year is on the badge?

Looked at it today, 1989, A bit older than I thought

And a few more pictures

All unwrapped and ready to offload
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Forklift tire needs a little air. 10,200 lb on a 8,500 rated lb forklift. :eek: Didn't even grunt, picked it right up. Just lifted it up, pulled the trailer out and set the lathe down to air up the tires
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The pucker factor was high at this point :eek 2:
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Well, it's inside the shop. Now we just need to figure out where we want it. Going to be somewhere around where my son is standing (on the right) We cleaned out a big hole in that area, but still trying to figure out exactly the correct position. For now we just moved it closer to it's final position and sat it down. Need to leave enough clear area to get a truck in the door. I think we need a bigger shop.

We made four 6 x 12 x 3/4 steel pads to set the feet on, need to spread the load on the floor a bit. This lathe has four really nice jack screws for feet and proper fork pockets for handling. Makes installation much easier.

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Over the next week I plan on getting it powered up. I need to study the schematics to see if I can make it run on single phase. The drives are all DC servos so there is a good chance I can pull that off. Three small VFDs will run the hydraulic pump and coolant pumps.
 
TOY or TOOL I am a nubie here but want to express my hate of the calling of our tools "toys" I feel a toy is something that gives you pleasure but is otherwise useless .......where as a tool gives us pleasure [wheither looking at it or using it] but it can make or repair something.......maybe it's just personal when my lovely wife says "oh rob just got a new toy" the hair goes up on the back of my neck , of course I say "Yes Dear" happy wife=happy life............49 years of marriage ..........must be doing something right!........bobbycoke
 
I glanced at the manual, it appears to have CSS as a standard software feature which you will truly appreciate down the road.
Appears to have the typical canned cycles which make programming simple parts a breeze.

This little piece of advice from the manual is precious.
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My shop is full of toys, they give me pleasure, just sitting there, (no value, whatever) and when I'm running them. I make nothing I sell, so there's no profit in running them, other than the satisfaction I get from being constructive.
 
Well I was wrong on the servos, turns out they are AC servos, so my single phase idea is not so good. Time for a RPC.

I just happen to have a couple of 15 HP air compressors sitting here that are brain dead, but the motors should be fine. So one of the motors is going to become a RPC.

I'll get the motor extracted from the pump and be off and running. Be making chips sooner than I thought. :)

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IT'S ALIVE !!!!!!!!!!

I haven't updated this thread for over a month because we haven't had any power to the machine. I've been fighting with a rotary phase converter, have a new motor in route. Nothing has gone right with that project. :mad: http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/another-rotary-phase-converter.63204/#post-520986

So we rented a 25 KW, 3 phase generator to power up the lathe. Got everything connected, checked out the voltage and flipped the 100 amp main breaker on the lathe......... Which immediately tripped. o_O No sparks or smoke, just a tripped breaker. So grab the multimeter and check for shorts, everything looked fine. I thought a transformer was shorted, but that turned out not to be the case.

Of course I don't have any detailed schematics of the electrical system so spent a day tracing wires. It turns out that the lathe has a safety system that I have never seen before. The door safety switch is wired into an auxiliary trip on the main breaker, so if the switch is not open, power can flow to the aux trip, and instantly trips the breaker. It took a few hours to figure that one out.:confused 3:

But the lathe is alive and well and all of the parts seem to move as they should. No nasty noises. So now we just need to learn how to use it, we have two large binders of instructions to wade through. :faint:

So this weekend we'll get the machine in it's final position and play with the controls to at least get some understanding of how it all works. Hopefully the RPC will be up and running in a week or so. I was able to get some current readings on the lathe, and it looks like the 15 HP RPC will be just fine, proabaly could have gone with a 10 HP. For the most part it is drawing about 7.5 amps with the spindle running unloaded. Max reading I saw was 28 amps on spindle acceleration 0 to 3000 RPM, and the spindle load meter was reading 150% during accel. We're not going to be working the machine very hard, so we should be in good shape.

Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to post some pictures or a video in operation.
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Congratulations Jim, at least you know the machine works. Looking forward to seeing some positive progress.
Turn and burn!
Paco
 
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