PM-1660TL

ddickey said:
If you get magnetic slides it takes up no space. In fact I can still lock my cross slide.
I know where you can get a new Rohm live center for a hundred bucks, 80% off of retail but has a standard point. Also a slim Rohm for ~45% off of retail.
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Please share!!
 
I looked at bull nose MT4 live centers, and nothing jumped out at me. I will have a lot of 5/8” to 1 1/4” tubing or pipe in there, a fair amount of 2” to 3” pipe, with the occasional 4” to 5” tubing or pipe.

I have an import MT2 bull nose live center so maybe an MT4 to MT2 adapter would suffice.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.
 
Just a general comment, you can spend a lot of hard earned $$$ on buying everything you think you will need, but I would pace yourself and take it more one step at a time. I have nothing against purchasing high quality items, I always say buy once, cry once, but there is a learning/experience curve to all this stuff. The lathe may come with a standard center which is fine for heavier stock, and extend point is always useful for getting in close with small diameter stuff but you may be still be limited by the type of insert cutter (clearance). I would go with carbide inserts for this size machine, you can remove some serious metal quickly. As far as a bull nose, if you are doing heavier pipe I would go with a MT4 bull nose. You can look on eBay, or the Z-live live centers are decent and reasonably inexpensive. One needs to shop around, and spread out the spend factor. On the lathe you can put a lot of money into the tooling, I was amazed at the costs. That being said, I plan to use what I have probably for my remaining years, and then probably someone else will continue on after me. Good quality tooling lasts a long time.

The RPC is sweet, it is a 50A socket for the input. One thing that is very important, is that two legs of the 240VAC are pass through, these must be attached to the transformer legs on the lathe/mill/etc. The wild leg ( manufactured/generated leg) should not be connected to a control transformer or circuity.
 
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mksj said:
Just a general comment, you can spend a lot of hard earned $$$ on buying everything you think you will need, but I would pace yourself and take it more one step at a time. I have nothing against purchasing high quality items, I always say buy once, cry once, but there is a learning/experience curve to all this stuff. The lathe may come with a standard center which is fine for heavier stock, and extend point is always useful for getting in close with small diameter stuff but you may be still be limited by the type of insert cutter (clearance). I would go with carbide inserts for this size machine, you can remove some serious metal quickly. As far as a bull nose, if you are doing heavier pipe I would go with a MT4 bull nose. You can look on eBay, or the Z-live live centers are decent and reasonably inexpensive. One needs to shop around, and spread out the spend factor. On the lathe you can put a lot of money into the tooling, I was amazed at the costs. That being said, I plan to use what I have probably for my remaining years, and then probably someone else will continue on after me. Good quality tooling lasts a long time,
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Point taken about pacing the spending. This size bull nose center is what I’m looking for, but this one may be made in China. To be honest, I’m not in the mood for spending this much money right now.

4MT Bull Nose Live Center

zlivecenter.com zlivecenter.com

Believe me, I would rather spend time out in my shop rather than working long hours at UPS. I look forward to my days off & retirement (i.e. shop time), but nowadays I spend most of my time at work.
 
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For the specialized and repeat work with tubing that you are doing I'd probably make some custom fit centers rather than use large bull noses. Get and make tooling to do exactly the tasks you need rather than a pile of stuff rarely used. Often a homemade tool works better than a standard one that isn't optimized to your needs. It might fit better, take less room on the lathe, have better bearings, etc. Optimize the tooling for your specific tasks.
 
AlanB said:
For the specialized and repeat work with tubing that you are doing I'd probably make some custom fit centers rather than use large bull noses. Get and make tooling to do exactly the tasks you need rather than a pile of stuff rarely used. Often a homemade tool works better than a standard one that isn't optimized to your needs. It might fit better, take less room on the lathe, have better bearings, etc. Optimize the tooling for your specific tasks.
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Cool. That had never even occurred to me. Sounds like a fun project!
 
mksj said:
...The RPC is sweet, it is a 50A socket for the input. One thing that is very important, is that two legs of the 240VAC are pass through, these must be attached to the transformer legs on the lathe/mill/etc. The wild leg ( manufactured/generated leg) should not be connected to a control transformer or circuity.
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That does sound incredibly important. What is the penalty if it is done incorrectly?

Edit: The wild (or manufactured) leg in my RPC was “Z”. The wire was blue. On the lathe, I connected this to “T”. The choices were R, S and T. Every receptacle, plug & terminal that I saw on the RPC clearly had the wild leg last. If you see T1, T2 and T3 then T3 is the wild leg. If you see X, Y and Z then Z is the wild leg. If you see R, S and T then T is the wild leg. Furthermore, expect the natural legs to have black & red wires. The “weird“ color (e.g. blue or white) will be the wild leg. Of course, green is neutral.
 
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