Heck of a lathe deal

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
A friend of a good friend just picked up one of these, from a scratch and dent guy
in Springfield, near Grizzly for $3850. Got to see it run before he bought it. Had a pinched
wire which kept if from running, so apparently Grizzly sold it off, might have collected on
shipping insurance. The seller fixed the wire, added oil and ran it. All surfaces still covered
with shipping preservative. Springfield is a 3 hr drive from here. I picked up my lathe at the
factory myself in my F150.


Heck of a deal on a really impressive lathe.

Bill
 

KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
That's about as good a deal on a medium size manual lathe as I've seen lately. Just about the perfect size. I'm looking forward to getting a (lightly used) backup lathe that size from my BIL as soon as we get our new shop open. With a 5C collet chuck that will be a great 2nd operation machine for us. If you shop carefully you should be able to get one with a plain back (what we need) for about $150 or a D1-4 back (for the Griz) for about $250.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
I am happy with the D1-4 mounting nose. A few more dogs to turn, but it does seem
like it would have to be really well located and attached with six.

This showed up on the KC Craig's List. Apparently the guy picks up scratch and dent from
Griz and gets them sorted and resells them.

Amazing deal. Similar to mine, but a couple of big steps up market.

I expect that in your operation, Keith, there are certain times when the CNC is busy and you need
something done. I can see where a backup manual would be a near necessity.

Bill
 
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KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
We have a Clausing Colchester 15 x 50 manual lathe in our cramped surroundings, it is located three feet away and parallel to our CNC lathe. All I have to do is spin 180 on my stool and I can service both machines. I set things up that way so that I could use the manual for 2nd operation work while the CNC is doing the primary/1st operation work. Just got done running a batch (500 pcs) of parts that start out as a 3/4" diameter 1018 rod about 5-3//8" long and ends up being 5.213" long and .715" diameter. The part sticks out about an inch from a .75" collet on the CNC lathe where it is faced, drilled halfway through, and chamfered inside and outside. When it is done it goes about a half inch deep into a .75 collet in the manual lathe, the free finished end is held with the tailstock center, and one pass is taken down the length of it to turn it to .715". It takes less time to turn the OD than it does to do the first end so I can do that safely while the CNC is running the next piece. When the parts are all done on one end I put a specially bored .715" collet in the CNC lathe and face, drill, chamfer, and turn down the last 1/2" of the other end.

A smaller spare lathe that I could keep set up for a collet would be convenient.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
OK, parallel processing. Keep the part moving in production, getting
changed while the CNC is busy.
Cool.

Bill
 

KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
As long as the cycle time on the manual lathe is less than the CNC lathe then everything works well. It would have added 500 more minutes to the job if we would have to run all three steps serially on one machine. It is no problem to use a manually operated collet chuck and tailstock to hold a piece for a single accurate turn on a good manual lathe. Once I adjusted the tailstock to get out the taper (easy enough to do) it was possible to hold the .715" diameter to +/-.002 consistently, which was well within the tolerance.

We have other jobs where we use the manual lathe for 1st or 2nd operation work in concert with the CNC lathe.