Who has a PM-932V? Couple questions

[B2]

Thanks Arty. The sympathy in appreciated, but not necessary and not solicited. I am just giving some cheap advice.

Good luck with your order. Maybe you will get one of the better machines. While some of them are probably ok, but I only get to purchase one at a time and so the QC is the luck of the draw. Since so much of the Chinese machines are probably made by hand (some untrained/unskilled guy drilling holes or working with poor tools... etc.) I think it just depends on who is making your machine and what kind of day they are having. For example, I think they probably just use a paper or wood template to mark the locations and a hand drill to make a lot of the holes... and so sometimes even the simplest of things are not aligned... like motor mounts where only three of four holes actually will take a screw! Or a lead screw crank handle mount that has two alignment pins but only one of them fits in its hole or is even drilled out. I think the most serious thing with my machine are that the gibs were cut wrong (long length, not flat, bowed, and the wrong taper... not much else could be done incorrectly) and more seriously the ways are not straight and certainly not parallel. I have worked on the gibs and got them somewhat fixed for now.... and I am slowly sanding (scraping) the ways, and measuring a LOT trying to get them parallel. They are getting better, but you have to sand a long time (days) to take off a few thousands of an inch off over a small area on a hardened way. By the way, if the ways are not made right then the x-y-z axis are not square and may have sloppiness (loosely-fitting... moves around) in their perpendicularity. If you tighten down the gibs to get rid of some of the sloppiness in the squareness, then the backlash gets really bad. For example on my y-axis I tightened the gib down to optimize backlash to about 0.0025- 0.003" when the table is near the column, but then when the table was moved out a few inches the backlash increased > 0.020" (I did not move the table any farther out as I was afraid I might crack the cast iron saddle as the gib was so tight). So you loosen the gib to get the backlash down over a reasonable travel length and live with the sloppiness. I even found that the E-stop switch was wired incorrectly. (Unsafe!) The list just goes on and on. Oh well you can learn a lot by trying to fix things. If I had it to do over, I would not buy a mill from China. You will note that when I purchased my PM1440GT lathe I made sure it was not from China.

Dave L.

 

[verbotenwhisky]

I went ahead and placed an order for the PM-932V...latest delivery estimate is in April, and that's just an estimate. If I'm still waiting by then I can get my deposit back. Doesn't really matter since I don't know what other new machine I'd order, unless they had another similar sized model in stock. China is going through another big COVID outbreak...hopefully the town in China where the factory is located isn't affected too much.

I originally wanted the PM940M but they could not even provide a date for getting one so I settled for a PM932M, ordered it and they kept pushing the date of arrival back. I finally asked them if they had one in rout available that I might be interested in and John said we have a PM940V-PDF sitting in the warehouse and I jumped on it, paid the extra for it and was pleased with it when it arrived.

I hope yours is on the way, I suspect you ordered from the same lot that mine was in originally.

 

[arty1]

I just took delivery of my PM-932V and can now answer my questions from the first post in this thread, namely what are the control box dimensions and is it a hassle to relocate.
Control box dims are 8.75" deep x 14.5" wide x 21.75" tall, and it *just* fits on the side of the cast stand. Relocating it isn't too much of a hassle, the main issue is lengthening the wire harnesses.

 

[B2]

Hi @arty1

You will have to keep an eye on this electronics location. As I mentioned before, I have a PM940M-VS-CNC with a very similar stand. The electronics box is even larger and was mounted to the back of the column, which I moved to the side for accessibility (not ideal, but up high).

Where you have put yours will be susceptible to oil and debris from cutting. You will want to build a shielding cover to allow the "stuff" to run out and over rather than down sides/door of the box. I see you have the box tilted back a little and this is good, but at the least through a plastic cover over it. Also, I had to tilt my stand to get the oil to drain at the right rear corner hole of the stands catch tray. Anyway you would not want cutting oil/water or metal debris getting into your electronics. Also, on my machine the coolant pump is located inside the stand, behind where you have put your electronics box. I assume you also have a door on the other side, but either way it is difficult and messy to change coolant and access to both sides is nice if you have anything else in the way. By the way, oil from the, auto oilier via the ways and lead screws, as well as coolant drips down inside the stand on to the pump and floor. So I purchase a cookie sheet pan with lip to put in the bottom. The coolant reservoir/tank sets in the pan and the pump is located on top of the tank. I also put some heavy duty Al foil inside to kind of guide the dripping oil into the pan. The plan was to attach a drain pipe to the cookie sheet and bring the liquid out the back to another catch, but ... the liquid has not over run the cookie sheet yet! The cookie pan has about a 3/4 to 1" high lip around the sides and was far cheaper than anything I could make. Besides it is teflon coated!! Anyway, I need to get in to that hole once in a while.

The cookie sheet pan that fit in the bottom of my stand and would just go through the side hole and then turn to lay in the bottom: Amazon: "Wilton Perfect Results Premium Non-Stick Bakeware Mega Cookie Sheet, 15 x 21-Inch, Steel'' ~ $15 at the time.

To allow it to drain out from under the stand, I purchased a tire valve stem that I was going to bore out, but which would provide the lip, o-ring, to attach to a hole in the bottom of the sheet pan without sticking down to low. I was going to attach a hose or pipe to this an come out the back. However, as I said, this is yet to happen. This is what I purchased but I probably should have gotten a right angle version: Amazon: "CKAuto 4 Pieces TR416 Metal Valve Stems Outer Mount Fits .453" & .625" Rim Holes Long 1 1/2", Silver"

Wow! I had not notice the nice floor you have under your mill. I have a concrete basement floor and inorder to prevent it from becoming oil soaked and stained I purchased heavy duty wide sheet "rubber" shower liner (Home Depot, 0.062" thick, the stuff you install against the wood floor before you install the tile in shower floor) and put it down under the mill stand. I then put down some cardboard around and under the stand which I can easily switch out as it gets dirty. It is all kind of trivial and I could have epoxied the concrete first, but that would have required that I moved a bunch of stuff. Anyway, flood cooling if you ever do this is pretty messy even with the stand edge channel to try to catch most of it.... so I mostly just have dripping going on.

Regards,

Dave L.

 

[arty1]

Those are good points. However I'll never have flood cooling and when I had my RF35 I never had an issue with oil being flung or dripping around the machine. But like you said, I could always just throw a plastic cover over the top of the box if it becomes an issue.

About the floor...It's a real wood laminate floating on top of a thin layer of foam. I'm surprised how durable it is for being in a workshop. I do a lot of woodworking and got tired of dropping tools on the concrete floor, plus the wood is *much* easier on the legs after being in the shop all day. I'm always dragging things over the floor and even have a 20gal fish aquarium and often splash water on the floor during water changes and it still looks relatively good.

 

[verbotenwhisky]

Hi @arty1

You will have to keep an eye on this electronics location. As I mentioned before, I have a PM940M-VS-CNC with a very similar stand. The electronics box is even larger and was mounted to the back of the column, which I moved to the side for accessibility (not ideal, but up high).

Where you have put yours will be susceptible to oil and debris from cutting. You will want to build a shielding cover to allow the "stuff" to run out and over rather than down sides/door of the box. I see you have the box tilted back a little and this is good, but at the least through a plastic cover over it. Also, I had to tilt my stand to get the oil to drain at the right rear corner hole of the stands catch tray. Anyway you would not want cutting oil/water or metal debris getting into your electronics. Also, on my machine the coolant pump is located inside the stand, behind where you have put your electronics box. I assume you also have a door on the other side, but either way it is difficult and messy to change coolant and access to both sides is nice if you have anything else in the way. By the way, oil from the, auto oilier via the ways and lead screws, as well as coolant drips down inside the stand on to the pump and floor. So I purchase a cookie sheet pan with lip to put in the bottom. The coolant reservoir/tank sets in the pan and the pump is located on top of the tank. I also put some heavy duty Al foil inside to kind of guide the dripping oil into the pan. The plan was to attach a drain pipe to the cookie sheet and bring the liquid out the back to another catch, but ... the liquid has not over run the cookie sheet yet! The cookie pan has about a 3/4 to 1" high lip around the sides and was far cheaper than anything I could make. Besides it is teflon coated!! Anyway, I need to get in to that hole once in a while.

The cookie sheet pan that fit in the bottom of my stand and would just go through the side hole and then turn to lay in the bottom: Amazon: "Wilton Perfect Results Premium Non-Stick Bakeware Mega Cookie Sheet, 15 x 21-Inch, Steel'' ~ $15 at the time.

To allow it to drain out from under the stand, I purchased a tire valve stem that I was going to bore out, but which would provide the lip, o-ring, to attach to a hole in the bottom of the sheet pan without sticking down to low. I was going to attach a hose or pipe to this an come out the back. However, as I said, this is yet to happen. This is what I purchased but I probably should have gotten a right angle version: Amazon: "CKAuto 4 Pieces TR416 Metal Valve Stems Outer Mount Fits .453" & .625" Rim Holes Long 1 1/2", Silver"

Wow! I had not notice the nice floor you have under your mill. I have a concrete basement floor and inorder to prevent it from becoming oil soaked and stained I purchased heavy duty wide sheet "rubber" shower liner (Home Depot, 0.062" thick, the stuff you install against the wood floor before you install the tile in shower floor) and put it down under the mill stand. I then put down some cardboard around and under the stand which I can easily switch out as it gets dirty. It is all kind of trivial and I could have epoxied the concrete first, but that would have required that I moved a bunch of stuff. Anyway, flood cooling if you ever do this is pretty messy even with the stand edge channel to try to catch most of it.... so I mostly just have dripping going on.

Regards,

Dave L.

Wally World... (Wal-Mart) has a rubberized sheet with a thin non-slip carpet which absorbs oil specifically for this purpose, that is what I use and deploy oil absorbent (Kitty litter) also if I know I will make a mess.