No Motor, No Work

I feel like I’m stuck today. For reasons not worth going into, I may be farming out the work on the air conditioning hole in the garage, so I’m not installing the unit right now. And the motor for my lathe is still en route, so I’m not installing that. And since I can’t use the lathe, I’m not learning machining.

I guess I should get off my butt and rig the lathe up so it’s ready to run as soon as the motor arrives. But that would take character.

I made a nice support panel for the VFD yesterday. I had a strange piece of flat steel scrap on hand, so I cut it down with the plasma cutter and put some holes in it. There are two completely pointless bolts projecting from the back of the lathe headstock, plus an empty threaded hole, so I decided to use these to hold up the panel. I bought a nice cobalt 3/8″ drill bit and made a couple of holes for the large bolt, using Dykem and a carpenter’s square and a scribe in order to locate them. Unfortunately, I didn’t line the holes up quite as well as I could have, so the panel leans to the right by a few degrees. I also made four holes for the VFD itself.

I cleaned the panel off and painted it to match the lathe. Or so I thought. At the hardware store, I tried to find a nice flat grey spray enamel, and I found one with a likely looking color on the cap. When I used it, it turned out to be silvery. Oh well.

I can always make a new panel later. I have a lot of flat scrap. This would be much easier with a decent drilling machine, like a BRIDGEPORT. I think I’ll wait. Alternatively, I could open one of the holes up to let the panel swing into an upright position, and then I could make a third hole and put a bolt into the vacant headstock hole to line things up.

As it is, it will look a little funny, but it will work. The VFD will be at a very convenient height, and I’ll have the drum switch lever right below it, for forward and reverse.

I am greatly disappointed in the way the seller treated me, but the lathe’s moving parts appear to be in excellent shape, so once I have it running, it should give great service. I should not have had to buy a new motor, but I think I’m better off without the vari-speed drive I was expecting. The seller offered me a free headstock casting because of the two cast iron corners that are broken off of the old one, but my guess is that the breakage is due to a design flaw. After all, it happened in two nearly identical spots. I think a better answer is to make steel caps to fit over the gaps and run bolts through them into the casting. It will hide the damage, and I won’t have to worry about having this problem again. If it’s a design flaw, the new headstock could end up just like this one, so the aggravation of installing it would be wasted. Also, I wonder how easy it is to remove and reinstall a headstock. For all I know, there are critical measurements that have to be made, which I can’t make here at home.

Man, I wish that air conditioner was installed.

First, Saw the Garage in Half

I have a bunch of important (to me) jobs facing me, and I have to prioritize.

I have to put the lathe back together, with the VFD wired up and the new motor installed. I guess it’s pointless to think about that until the new motor arrives. The ancient replacement motor I received isn’t very good; I finally realized that my inability to get the pulley stack on correctly means the shaft is so marred, it’s not acceptable for use. I had this idea that it was normal to have to use a non-marring hammer to drive one of these things onto a shaft, and that reducing the misalignment was a matter of skill, but that’s clearly BS. It should go on straight, without all this grief. The seller sent me a lemon. I can’t get it straight, so if I use it, the belt will always rub on the outside of the pulleys during part of each turn, and the lathe will vibrate, and the belt will eventually snap. When the new motor arrives, I’ll lubricate the shaft and slide it in, and everything will work the way it’s supposed to. This is the difference between the right way and the Fred Sanford way.

I have to put my Saiga shotgun together. All of the improved parts except for the light have arrived.

Finally, I have to install my new cheapo Chinese garage air conditioner. I guess that should come first, because it will make all the other projects bearable.

I was all bummed out because I thought I was going to have to spend $900 on a split unit or $600 on a conventional wall unit, and I figured the $600 job would mean cutting a giant hole in the wall and maybe running a circuit. Then I stumbled on a my 18000-BTU floor-model beauty at Brandsmart, and I took it home for $137 including tax. I still have to cut a hole, but that isn’t nearly as upsetting now that I’m getting a bargain.

What a difference this will make in my ability to use tools. Ordinarily, in any month which is not part of the November-April string, working in the garage is pretty bad. Every time I tilt my head, sweat pours into my safety glasses and makes puddles inside the lenses, making it impossible to see. My shirt sticks to me and digs into my skin. If I wear a respirator, it gets soggy. Sweat falls on anything I work on. I run two fans, but they don’t work all that well, and they blow papers around and keep sawdust in the air.

Now I should be able to cool the garage down to a reasonable temperature and relax. And I found a replacement remote for ten bucks, shipped. Sweet.

Og and Jim Dunmyer seem to think it’s a bad idea for me to make my new VFD explode–where is their sense of adventure?–so I looked the manual over last night and figured out how to connect my drum switch to the logic inputs. This will allow me to use the drum switch to reverse the motor without blowing anything up. It won’t allow me to stop the motor with the switch. I’m pretty sure. Depends on what the VFD is programmed to do when both contacts are open.

One nice thing about this is that it means I can quit trying to find a way to make the drum switch reverse the motor directly, and I can avoid fooling with the 12-gauge wires I bought for the purpose. I’ll be able to use 18 gauge, which is tiny and cooperative.

I learned something interesting. The VFD is programmed to take 10 seconds to get the motor running. That’s the default, and it’s no good. I think I’ll change it to one second. That sure beats the hard start I used to get, but it’s still fast enough to be convenient.

I may need to put a big fat resistor in there somewhere to help the VFD brake the motor. The one Hitachi sells is insanely expensive, so I’m going to conspire with forum denizens and find something cheaper. As I understand it, a VFD with no added resistor will provide a certain amount of braking, but it’s not clear that it will do the job for this application, and I don’t want to put it under any strain.

I think someone told me he used a stove burner as a resistor. That would be good. I could turn metal and fry eggs at the same time.

It would be great to be able to do a little milling with this machine (or any machine), but I have no milling attachment. I thought I’d have to buy an old Clausing attachment, but it looks like there is an aftermarket job that will fit any compound. That should be much cheaper.

I am really nervous about sawing up the garage wall.

Because I live in Karl Goebbels Coral Gables, home of the world’s worst zoning Nazis, I want to pretty up the outside of the unit with those wraparound louver things, but I can’t find them on the web. Does anyone know what they’re called?

I better start measuring for the saw.

Be Sure to Sport a Bro

I have truly lost it. Today I went to a local discount store, and they had a floor model 18000 BTU wall air conditioner for sale for $128. I was not going to pass that up. It’s Chinese; I don’t care. An American wall unit will last at least five years, and a lot of them last twenty. I’m sure I can squeeze at least three years out of this baby. That’s a bargain, and anything beyond that, I consider gravy.

Now I have to bang a big hole in the garage wall.

I checked with an expert, and I’ve been told that a hole this size in a cinderblock wall requires no support whatsoever. Hooray for me. I can cut the hole, add pressure-treated wood held in place with tapcons, shove the unit in, and relax in the now-air-conditioned disco garage.

I can’t believe that price. I didn’t get a remote control or a manual with it, but for $128, I can get off my butt and push the buttons by hand. I didn’t get the little brackets that hold the unit up, but fabricating some should take about fifteen minutes.

It’s way bigger than I need, BTU-wise, but it’s very compact, so it will fit in a small hole. It has no heating cycle, but I don’t need one! Perfect for my needs. Online, I kept seeing 15,000-BTU units for almost $600, delivered. Forget THAT.

I just wish I had room for a pool table out there.

Lathe Gets Heart Transplant

I decided to do the predictable thing, give up, spend money, and get a new motor for the lathe. The motor the seller sent me runs, but it makes a bonking sound at low speed, and it just doesn’t look healthy. Also, the marred-up spindle appears to be incapable of holding the pulley stack so it spins true. I don’t think that will be good for the lower belt, and I’m sure it will make noise.

The smart thing would be to leave it in the lathe until it melted, but I just don’t have the patience to see if it gives good service. The lathe’s guts are in great shape. The ways look good. I think the compound and the other moving parts are okay. Mating all that to a junky motor just feels wrong. And like I said, somebody just happens to be Ebaying the exact type of motor I need, for less than 20% of list, including shipping. DONE. The peace is worth it.

Hopefully I will never have to interact with the seller again. He’s supposed to send me a replacement knob for the thread selection lever, and I think he’ll actually do it. I may sell the 1-phase motor back to him. I’ll try to find a use for the old 3-phase motor, or sell it. That’s the end. I guess I have to install the stupid thing and use it while I wait for the new one. That will help me get the bugs out of the wiring, I suppose.

I Think I Hear the Ice Cream Truck!

The lathe has absorbed my life. I rented a tool grinding video from Smartflix, and the disk was corrupted, so I could not copy it and return it right away. I have been spending whatever time I can find, sitting and making notes, but it’s taking forever. Sometimes it doesn’t play correctly, which is irritating. I received two other disks with it, and I decided to go ahead and send them back.

I now have two lathe motors, and neither is in a lathe. I have to put the “new” motor in and rig up the VFD. I was going to dump the drum switch and use the VFD for forward/reverse control, but I now think that would be stupid. The lever on the front of the lathe is super convenient, and the buttons on the VFD will never be as easy to use. I figure all I have to do is arrange the drum switch so it switches two wires on the motor’s input. I should be able to figure that out. I don’t see why the VFD would object. I don’t think it will know the difference.

I think the best thing is to dump both motors and install a Baldor. The perfect motor (nearly so, anyway) is available on Ebay very cheap. I’ll check the shaft size to be sure, but that’s the only variable that could give me trouble.

Being unable to learn from painful experience, I have contacted another dealer about a milling machine. He’s going to root around in his stock and tell me what he can offer. He has two nice-looking mills with DROs on his site, with all sorts of scrapy marks visible on the saddles and beds. The other possibility is to get a restored mill which is in better shape but costs more.

I told the guy with the DRO machines I wanted to use an escrow company or pay a mechanic look the machines over. That much, I have learned.

Og says virtually all machine tool dealers are jerks. The guy I’m dealing with now sent me a big long email packed with information, and he didn’t resent me flat-out stating that I was afraid he would screw me over. He must be a freak of nature.

If I ever create anything with the lathe (beyond the amazing 5/8″ bolt with no head), I will post it so you can admire it.

Chucks on Sale at Enco!

Here’s a clever tool question.

I clearly need a 4-jaw chuck for my lathe. I have been holding out for a used American chuck. But it has occurred to me that since the jaws are completely independent, this should be a relatively low-precision device compared to a 3-jaw chuck. The jaws don’t have to be in any particular relationship to each other. If that’s true, shouldn’t an import be just as good?

Programming a VFD is a Waste of my Giant Cranium

Today the new old motor for my lathe arrived. It looked like it came from Al Capone’s vault. The paint was in bad shape, and it was beaten up. But when I connected the VFD, it ran. Not smoothly, but it did run.

I had to get down on the garage floor to get the bolts out of the base of the old motor. Then I had to contort myself into the space behind the lathe to get the wiring hacked out of the conduit and boxes. Getting the pulley stack off the old shaft was a joy, believe me. Then I had to persuade the key to come out of the shaft keyway with a hammer and punch. I cleaned the pulleys with the last of my orange-based gun spray, and I put the pulleys on the “new” motor. I guess I’m ready to install it in the lathe. TOMORROW.

The motor I got today is nothing to write home about. People talk about how great old industrial motors are. I have my doubts. This thing makes a sound on every revolution, so my guess is that the bearings are not great, and the shaft looks like someone used it as a johnson bar.

When I put it on the VFD, it made a whistling sound so loud and shrill it was not acceptable. It would drive you crazy to use the lathe with that noise going on. I figured something was loose in the motor, but it turns out the signal to the motor has a pulse frequency, and that’s the problem. Apparently the waveform of each phase is made up of spiky digital pulses at a much higher frequency. I’m guessing here from a picture I saw. Somehow, if you let the pulses get too far apart, it makes your motor whistle. If you let them get too close together, it creates RF interference. On my VFD, you can vary it between 5 KHz and 14 KHz. I decided to ramp it right up to 14. To hell with the radio. Then I felt bad about my neighbors, and I decided to test it. The RF made Todd Schnitt’s show sound bad in the garage, but in my car, twenty feet away, he sounded fine. Who cares about radio interference that disappears after twenty feet? I ran it right back up to 14, and now the whistle is very quiet and sort of pleasant.

I found a really nice Baldor on Ebay for a small fraction of retail. I am considering buying it. The frame is the same. It should work fine. But I want to be sure the VFD won’t kill it. I know I can get an inverter-ready motor, but I’ll have to wait until one becomes available at a price I like. I’m not sure if it’s necessary.

I loves me some Baldor.

A thread on Practical Machinist says failure of a standard motor due to inverter use is nearly unheard-of, so maybe this is the thing to get. I can sell both of the motors the lathe seller gave me. Maybe I’ll get part of my investment back. I’ll say they APPEAR TO HAVE VERY LITTLE USE. That phrase worked on me. Maybe it will work on someone else.

A company called Orion makes add-on fans for motors running on VFDs. Neat.

I guess I haven’t learned my lesson, because I am corresponding with another machinery dealer. And it looks like I can get a Chinese split air conditioner for the same price as an American unit, without cutting giant holes in the wall. I don’t know if it will really cool 600 square feet, but I’d be happy if it even came close. It’s 12000 BTUs. I guess I could sit right next to it and pour ice down my pants.

If the garage gets too swanky, I’m afraid I’ll never leave.

I have been trying to find the best way to mount the VFD, and I think the answer is to get rid of the drum switch completely (using the VFD to reverse the motor), mount a piece of stiff sheet metal to the back of the headstock (over existing bolts) and mount the VFD to the metal. It would be right in my face, ready to use. Beautiful. Oddly, I happen to have a piece of sheet metal that would be perfect. This would be a good excuse to make a template and do some plasma cutting. Or I could make a plywood support instead, which would give me an excuse to run the mighty Powermatic.

This will be sweet. Some day I may even make something.

Thanks to You, I Stocked Up

Every morning, out of habit, I check the Classic Arms site. I got my C&R license quite some time ago, and I almost immediately lost all desire to use it, but I’m so used to looking at Classic Arms, I can’t stop.

All week, they’ve been writing about the ammunition crisis. I don’t understand it. I have all the ammunition a person could want, and I got it at great prices. I even have primers. If I were a truly accomplished right wing Christian potential possible terrorist, instead of a highly ineffective one, I could mount a really spectacular standoff and shoot up every cop car in Coral Gables.

That’s what leftist nutballs think bulk ammunition buys are for. But sane, intelligent people realize that the real motivation is stinginess. Why pay seventy-five cents each for 20 bullets when you can pay thirty cents each for a thousand? I don’t run around taking hostages and shouting about Ruby Ridge. I go to the range and shoot targets. That takes a lot of ammunition. Actual murderers generally spend very little on bullets. It’s probably pretty rare for 90-pound crackheads and career burglars to go to gun shops and load up on the latest frangible rounds. “How many Cor-Bons can I has for this Blaupunkt?”

Honestly, I don’t know what goes on in the heads of urban liberals. They seem to think that if you have one gun and one bullet, you’re armed as well as you could ever need to be. That’s because most of them have never fired a gun and know nothing about firearms. They don’t realize that people miss, or that criminals usually can’t be incapacitated with one shot, or that you need a lot of ammunition just to learn how to use your weapon safely, accurately, and responsibly.

You know what? Liberals who know nothing about guns should quit telling the rest of us what to do with them. Do I go to their houses and tell them how to work their bongs and bondage gear? Do I tell them how to apply their VD ointment or cook their heroin or beat their three-tooth-having common-law wives in front of their subsidized housing? Do I point at their buttcrack tattoos and say, “That’s not how you spell ‘Obama'”?

“I really think you have too many bullwhips and ball gags. I honestly believe you don’t need this much weed and smack. I think four guys in a men’s room stall is plenty. How many decks of tarot cards can one person use?” Imagine me, butting in to liberals’ lives to say these things. It’s like Dr. Phil telling people how to lose weight. Stick to what you KNOW.

I realized last night that I really need a pistol laser. Some strange person parked in the driveway while doing something that made their car make odd sounds. I went outside with a pistol to check the car out. I kept it concealed, but it was ready to fire. I realized the darkness was a real handicap. The car pulled away, but what if there had been a problem? A laser would have simplified things greatly. I better look into that.

I have long weapons with lasers (finally), but I am not quite ready to walk out onto the porch waving a shotgun every time someone comes near the house. That kind of thing doesn’t fly with the neighbors, and it’s a bit of an overreaction. I’ve paused in people’s driveways for perfectly legitimate reasons; I would have been highly disturbed had they come out brandishing long guns. But it’s proper and correct to have a gun handy when you investigate a problem on your property (after all, I carry mine when I shop for groceries), and you need to be confident of hitting your target.

I also realized that when you go onto another person’s property at night–a bad idea to begin with–you really need to be nice. This individual probably had no idea he was ten seconds and one mistake away from the Promised Land. I would do just about anything to avoid harming another person physically, but sometimes situations go bad in a hurry, and in a contest with some doofus who doesn’t train with his gun, I will prevail in a big way. And when the cops arrive, they will give me a high five (or as we call it in Miami, a “cinco alto”). This is Florida.

I got my rifle and shotgun lasers dirt cheap, but I doubt Hong Kong has caught up with Glock laser technology, so I’ll probably have to spend some coin to get ready. Maybe I should grit my teeth and move to a different caliber, too. The 9mm isn’t all that great for shooting through car doors, and last night I saw that such things can be legitimate concerns. I used to assume there would be no reason to shoot through a door, since a person in a car is not likely to be on your property. But what if you go out to check on a suspicious car, and they shoot? They can be completely off your property and still require a response. Maybe the best answer is to stick a laser on the .38 Super, which does a bang-up job on sheet metal, and use it in those situations. If you use the right caliber and load, a car is about as hard to penetrate as a styrofoam cooler.

One more reason to be nice when you drive.

Anyway, there is no ammunition crisis in my house. Unless you’re talking about closet space.

Be Sure to Bend Over Backwards to Please Businesses You Patronize

I have been working on the lathe. Now that I’m a master machinist, I’m pretty comfortable out there, dismantling and greasing and oiling. It may be hard for a lay person to understand.

I contacted the seller–PBUH–about the useless thread selector knob, and my best guess from his response is that he plans to replace it. He is expressing impatience and a desire to get this over with. Imagine how much quicker it would have gone, had he sent me the right lathe and spent, oh, seven minutes inspecting it before shoving it out the door. But you can’t ask for the world.

Seriously, think about it. Until yesterday, I had no idea how this thing worked. But he’s upset because I haven’t taken it completely apart, checked every function, and discovered every single way in which he failed to live up to the bargain. Dude, I would have checked the power feed, thread indicator dial, thread selector lever, back gear, sliding gear shifter handle, and a ton of other things, IF I HAD HAD ANY IDEA HOW TO LOCATE AND OPERATE THEM. Maybe with your 9,000 years of experience, you could have taken a tiny fraction of the time it takes me, looked the lathe over, and fixed it up.

While I was waiting for this thing, he said something about how it was going to be cleaned and checked over. I am not sure how you can clean something and leave a thick layer of ostensibly undisturbed crud all over it, but some people have gifts I lack. Maybe he means he hit it with the leaf blower, Carl Spackler style. As for checking it, the nonfunctioning thread selector knob would appear to indicate that the check consisted of driving by and glancing at it through a car window.

This is the same guy who sent me three “new” micrometers which were completely petrified. He didn’t even open the box and give the thimbles a turn. Just FOOMP! Into the box and onto the pallet. NEXT!

If there’s one thing a customer loves, it’s a vendor who causes terrible problems and then complains that the customer hasn’t fixed them fast enough.

In brighter news, I haven’t found anything else that really scares me. I got up my nerve and opened the headstock up. The lid on that thing is machined cast iron, even though stamped steel would do fine. It probably weighs 12 pounds. I took it off and looked in there and saw…1974. That’s the year the lathe was made. I traveled back in time. If I had been wearing long pants, they would have instantly gotten three inches wider at the ankle.

The inside of the cast metal headstock was brown; I suppose they get that way before they leave the factory. I may be wrong; cast iron rusts really fast. But the steel parts–the gears and shafts and pinions–looked almost as if they had just been made. They glistened and winked above a pool of fragrant oil, as if they had no idea it was 2009.

So it looks like there is nothing wrong with the guts of the machine. Only those parts that have been subjected to the ignorance of prisoners are beaten up.

I had the speed set pretty slow, so I figured it was safe to turn it on and see if it had splash lubrication. It did. And it splashes real good, even at low speeds. I had to jump out of the way to avoid getting a nice stripe of oil down the front of my clothes. The biggest gear caught it and sprayed it vertically into the air.

I tried to lubricate the lathe. I got out my new grease gun and loaded it up and went to work. And it looks like I shot grease into two fittings intended for oil. Oh, well. Two of the big gears outside the headstock had fittings, and I misunderstood the manual, and there you go. I couldn’t get them apart to the point where I could scrape the grease out, so I left it in there. Hopefully the lathe won’t explode right away.

I oiled all the other bits as well as I could, and I used solvent to get the crusty grease off the ways and other moving parts. You wouldn’t believe the difference it makes. The grime the seller left on this thing as about as slippery as cold peanut butter mixed with molasses, so when I tried to move the tailstock, for example, it required a good shove. Now everything slides all happy-like. And some of the noise has disappeared. I’m starting to see how this could turn out to be a good machine instead of a nightmare.

I may have to take the carriage off. There’s a little clamp that fell off, and even though a simple bolt holds it on, it’s a bear to hold in place while you attach the bolt. I’d like to apologize to the seller for letting that clamp fall off! I’m so sorry I didn’t see that he left it loose, causing it to drop as the lathe was put in place in the garage. That was irresponsible of me.

I sure hope there were no problems with my money, which has been in his bank account for over three weeks. I sure hope it wasn’t the wrong size, and that it wasn’t defective.

This gives me more confidence about buying a mill. It shouldn’t. But it does. This only worked out by God’s grace, and I was an idiot for trusting this guy. But somehow it gives me hope that I’ll be able to get this stuff done.

God Bless the Bureaucrats

I got absolutely nothing done today, with regard to the lathe. I had to go with my father to bring his boat home from the yard. The bridge Nazis have decided Miami’s Brickell Avenue bridge will now open and close based on random readings from a plethysmograph attached to the bridgetender’s goiter, so the big signs on the side of the bridge, which used to have some relationship to the bridge schedule, are now purely ornamental. The signs say the bridge stays down between 4:30 and 6:00 p.m., so it should open on demand before 4:30, but at 3:05, the genius in the tower told us she felt like having an opening at 3:30, so we had to wait. While she watched Oprah. I guess.

I sat there on the flybridge trying to figure out what the purpose of the bizarre new policy was. Then it hit me: I’ll bet it’s GREEN. It takes a lot of juice to open a drawbridge. I’ll bet some pea-brain in the city government decided to save forty dollars a week by holding up traffic.

Of course, you have to use your boat’s motors to fight the current and wind while you sit there waiting, and if you add up all the boats that get stuck, that takes more energy than the policy saves. And then there’s the obvious cost in lost man-hours. The Miami River is very important to commercial boat traffic, and they need to get in and out in a timely manner. So the green hypothesis doesn’t make any sense at all.

That’s why it’s probably true. None of this green crap is correct. “Recycled” newspapers go to the dump. There is no such thing as global warming. “Green” jobs kill regular jobs. It’s all a feel-good fantasy.

I guess I shouldn’t be this irritated about something I merely guessed at.

I’m rooting around on Google, and it looks like the Coast Guard is in charge of the bridges. That explains everything. The Coast Guard dances for the Obamessiah, so maybe some of his “progressive” foolishness has trickled down and infected the bridge schedule.

I took the side cover off the lathe and looked the gears over. I can’t see anything missing. The lathe was going “tonk tonk tonk” when it ran, and someone told me it could be a missing gear tooth, so I had to look. It turns out the lathe only makes this sound with the chuck attached. I’m thinking maybe some filth between the spindle and chuck kept it from seating tightly, so it rocks a little and makes noise. Or there could be a loose part in the chuck. Or I don’t know how to seat the chuck. I used the spanner wrench that came with the lathe, but I was only guessing.

The chuck spins on, so you have to wonder what happens when you use the lathe in the direction that unspins the chuck. It has to be fun when that hunk of steel flies off at 1800 RPM with a workpiece attached to it. It weighs maybe 30 pounds. My guess is that a smart lathe operator never operates the lathe in this mode unless held at gunpoint. Or because his federal-employee boss tells him Obama Almighty says counterclockwise is green and diverse.

Is this bad engineering at its worst, or is there some way to lock the chuck on the spindle? I’ll try to find out.

I think the bearings on the motor shafts may be giving out. Something down there doesn’t sound healthy. I assume they’re reasonably cheap, since they’re on the cheap side of the drive train. The precision stuff is up top. I’ll look them over when I replace the motor. I’ll bet it’s some kind of standard bearing you can buy from MSC.

While I was at the boatyard, I asked the owner if he knew of anyone up there who had bits of appetizing scrap suitable for scrounging by a metalworking hobbyist. He told me to leave my number with the receptionist. I don’t know what types of round stock they use, except for aluminum tubing. Propeller shops make a lot of custom shafts from stainless, so they have to end up with lots of short scraps, but this yard doesn’t do that type of work. I think Miami Propeller is the only place around here.

There are a lot of stainless “Aquamet” scraps on Ebay. I have a hunch that’s propeller-shaft material. It sure sounds like it. “Aqua.” I looked this stuff up on the web, and it sounds like fine metal. Maybe I could make interesting kitchen tools from it.

I once threw out a four-foot long, three-inch thick shaft stub. I feel pretty bad about that now. But you can’t keep crap like that lying around, on the assumption that one day you might go insane and buy a lathe.

I’m pooped and the birds are squawking. I better deal with them.

For Fifty Cents You May Touch my Finger

The boatyard trip did not pan out, so I fiddled with the lathe. It’s actually running.

I know you’re amazed that I installed and programmed a VFD and got the lathe running so fast. I would be amazed, too. If that were true. But it isn’t. The lathe story has more kinks and turns than an Obama campaign promise.

The seller sold me a Clausing 5914. The photo he showed me was actually a 5936. The differences? The 5936 has no clutch, a smaller motor, and no variable speed drive. There is one more difference, which I’ll get to in a minute.

The lathe arrived, and I complained, and this guy insists I got a better lathe than the one I wanted, which may be true, but I spent money on a bigger VFD than I needed (sort of; you’ll understand in a minute), which cost me a lot of money. The seller will not take it back unless I pay shipping. He’s completely wrong on the law, but if this lathe can be made to do what I want, it would be a waste of time and money to take him to court.

I got the VFD out today and started reading the manual. The box had a sticker that said I couldn’t return the VFD if it had been opened. Fine. I had to open it, right? So I started reading up on it, and then I went to look at the lathe’s wiring and motor. I had to find out what size the motor really was; I had been hearing 1 HP and 1 1/2 HP. You need this information to make the VFD work.

I located the motor’s plate, and I removed a panel covering it, and I cleaned the grime off the plate, and lo and behold, it was a 1-phase motor. I am not kidding. You can’t use a VFD with this kind of motor. So instead of spending $125 more for a bigger VFD, I had spent $350 for a VFD I couldn’t use at all. Which is a lot worse.

The seller had offered to send a 2 HP motor for nothing. This was back when I was complaining to him about the small motor. We both thought everything was three-phase at that time. I emailed the seller today and told him to go ahead and ship it. His explanation for the 1-phase motor was that they had replaced the 3-phase job and wired the new 1-phase motor up so it would work with a 3-phase plug and socket. I figured I had a really worn-out lathe, because three-phase motors are very tough, and this lathe had buried one.

I emailed the seller again and suggested I return the lathe and we split the cost of shipping, since it wasn’t much more than what he would have to spend to make this right. He wasn’t having any of that. He claims he received the email after he shipped the motor, but I wouldn’t believe him if he said Barney Frank loved show tunes.

In the midst of all this, I emailed the manufacturer. They got right back to me. Guess what kind of motor this lathe originally shipped with? SINGLE-PHASE. I think you know what that means. This is the original motor. So I got this guy to send me a bigger three-phase motor, on the theory that the old motor had been replaced, when the lathe was actually stock.

Am I going to tell him? Of course not. He promised me a lathe with a 2 HP 3-phase motor, and I am entitled to it. I’ll keep the extra motor and see if I can use it on a mill or a bench grinder or something. Or I’ll sell it. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t know that this seller would be honest enough to admit that I’m entitled to the motor, so I’m not planning to help him find out it’s not what the lathe came with. For all I know, he’d get on the horn to UPS and beg them to bring it back to him. At this point, if he shipped me a gold Rolex by mistake, I’d sell it, make the deal right, and send him a nice note and the excess money. Minus the price of half a dozen expensive bird toys.

I think the odds that he reads this blog are about like the odds that I’m going to get a refund, so I’m not afraid to say this stuff here.

I tried to measure the runout on the spindle, and if the indicator is right, it’s very low, so I am hoping the lathe isn’t a basket case.

I don’t know where I’m going to get a four-conductor cord or a plug for the new motor, but it looks like I don’t have to worry about that right away.

Okay, I’m stupid. I don’t need a four-conductor cord, do I? The power to the VFD will be single-phase.

I’m turning into a real Fred Sanford/Tim Taylor. When I realized the existing cord was too short, I walked across the garage to the unnecessary forty-foot length of 50-amp 3-conductor cord I bought for my welder, sliced off a piece, put a Home Depot plug on it, and hooked it up. I actually have things like that lying around. Well, I didn’t have the plug. I had a receptacle, for some reason. I had it half wired up before I realized it was a receptacle and had to get in the car. Still, I think I’m pretty amazing. I had my cable cutters and Ideal wire strippers right there at hand. And I bought my first grease gun today.

Please don’t feel inferior.

I can tell I’m going to be a great machinist, because I have already nearly thrown a heavy workpiece across the garage (I dove for cover while the lathe spun down), and I also left the key in the chuck once. I didn’t turn the lathe on, but the sight of the key still in the chuck was enough to put the fear of God in me. And I turned the back gear on without disengaging the direct-drive thing, which didn’t make the drive belt very happy.

Time to eat some Costco chicken.

Never Pay by Check

My lathe troubles have abated to some extent.

I ordered a Clausing 5914 lathe from an out of state dealer. Every piece of email correspondence from the order onward had “Clausing 5914″ in it, as did the invoice. A Clausing 5936 is what I ended up with. It’s basically the same lathe, but it’s my understanding that it has a 1 HP motor instead of 2 HP, and it has step pulleys instead of a vari-speed drive. I spent $125 more than I had to on the VFD, because I didn’t know I was receiving a smaller motor.

The seller claims I knew I was getting a 5936 because he sent me a photo of the lathe. The photo doesn’t show the model number, and I wasn’t able to tell the difference between these two models by looking at a photo. It’s hard to see how he could be telling the truth, unless he has some kind of problem with his mind or his memory. He has health issues; maybe they interfere with his ability to keep up with orders.

He says this is a better lathe. Maybe that’s true, but it sure looks like he knew I wanted a 5914. He cut $400 off the price without telling me; the 5936 was more expensive, and I sent a check for the price of the 5914, and he never said anything about it.

I can go to small claims court and win. He’s subject to Florida jurisdiction because of his website. But suing people unnecessarily is not compatible with my beliefs. I believe God is real, and he makes things right better than any court could. I wouldn’t buy anything from this guy again, but I’m not planning to go on a crusade to get even. I would like to part with him on friendly terms and get on with my life.

Maybe he seriously believed what he did was ethical, and maybe I ended up getting something better than what I ordered, but this is not acceptable business practice. If this had happened with Grizzly, they would have sent a truck, picked up the machine, apologized profusely, and either refunded all my money or supplied a new machine. No expense to me.

He’s offering a replacement motor and a replacement for the broken casting. I should take him up on those.

I also bought a set of micrometers from him. They’re NSK carbide mikes. I got a set of 3, 0″-3”, new old stock. But they’re very old. The grease inside them has hardened into varnish, and only one of them is usable. I tried Kroil on the two frozen mikes, but so far, no luck. He says he’ll take them back. That’s good, but I wish they had worked. They would have been a great deal. I paid $45.

I’m trying to find other micrometers. It looks like I found something interesting. There is a company called Scherr that makes good measuring tools, and they don’t get the same prices big names get. I found some nice new Scherr micrometers on Ebay. I may get them to replace the NSKs. The biggest one is a left-hand mike. I’m not sure what difference that makes. I assume it means it’s a mirror opposite of a right-hand mike. Surely I can use a mike just as well with my left hand. I’ll end up paying twice as much, but these are better tools, and they may actually work.

I’ve been trying to get the grease off the lathe. I know a machine tool will always have a certain amount of grime on it, but I want it clean enough so I can touch it without blackening my hands and clothes. It has something resembling congealed cosmoline on it. Denatured alcohol seems to take it off.

The chuck is not great. It has one-piece jaws, and it’s not adjustable. I was going to see if the seller had any nice used chucks for the lathe, but I think you can guess what happened to that plan. God only knows what he would send me.

I’m somewhat discouraged, because I trusted this man’s reputation, and things went poorly. I’ve been talking to another dealer with a good reputation, about a couple of old milling machines, but now I wonder if a good reputation is worth anything. Everybody I checked said the lathe seller was a saint.

Caveat emptor. Every deal can’t be a good experience.

Life Can’t be Simple

Here’s weird news. The lathe I just received isn’t the one I ordered. The seller had two for sale; one was a Clausing 5914 with variable speed drive, and the other was a 5936 with step pulleys. For some reason, the step pulley model was more expensive. I paid the lower price, and I received the wrong lathe.

Now I can’t figure out what to do. This thing may be better than the other one for all I know. I emailed the seller.

More

Here’s what someone says about this lathe on Practical Machinist:

The 5936 doesn’t have the Vari-speed, but more importantly doesn’t have the traveling clutch/brake. The metric change gear sets sell for $750 – $1,000, but remember that you can’t cut imperial threads with the metric gearset installed, and the metric banjo doesn’t have the high/low compound gear selector, so you have half the number of change gears available.

More

More fun information: it has a 1 HP motor, and I just received an expensive 3 HP VFD which I can’t return without paying a restocking fee.

Freep at Will

I can’t believe the lathe is arriving today. I can’t believe I did this. I have absolutely nothing on hand to put in the chuck! I got sidetracked by an idiotic lawsuit, and I’m also lazy. But I guess getting the lathe set up and getting the VFD attached will be more than enough work for one day.

Somebody sent me a link to an MSNBC poll this morning. The poll is about Ob*ma’s first 100 days, during which he has managed to outspend all of his predecessors, insure a socialist future, nationalize a big chunk of our banking industry, and assume partial control of our doomed automakers. I am trying to think of something worse he could do, but I’m drawing a blank. Oh, I forgot this: he plans to respond to increasing belligerence and military spending in Russia and China by gutting our armed services and killing the missile shield, and he’s not doing anything to counter Chinese infiltration of our computer systems and the onboard electronics of our military planes. And he’s hostile to Israel, as demonstrated by his refusal to meet with Netanyahu without formal notice and his Secretary of State’s unbelievable remarks about Iran.

Great President.

As usual, both sides are trying to Freep the poll. I voted twice already, in five minutes. This is much like Wizbang’s silly award polls. I made a few people mad a few years back by pointing out that there were no safeguards against multiple votes, and I was criticized roundly for not being a good do-bee and all-around team player. I’m not sure why I was obligated to muzzle myself to help someone else’s completely self-serving efforts to publicize his blog, but there you go. MSNBC is apparently a few years behind Wizbang, when it comes to Freep-proofing their polls. They don’t even check your IP. I voted once in Firefox and once in Explorer. I would guess that if I cleared my cookies, I could vote over and over, all day.

Go vote if you want. It’s fun, even if it serves no purpose whatsoever.

I just voted again. I restarted Internet Explorer, and the vote buttons came up. Can’t seem to vote a fourth time, though. How can anyone be sufficiently unenlightened to believe in Internet polls in 2009?

Here’s a new Internet poll.

I better have some oatmeal and get ready for the lathe.

Help me With the Accommodations

Today I have a challenge. I have to figure out how to take this off a skid and turn it and put it up against a garage wall. It arrives tomorrow.

We are looking at about a thousand pounds here. I can’t lift it by the chip pan; it has to be moved using forks under the bed or some kind of strap.

A while back, I unexpectedly received an enormous used Genie Superlift, but it’s not well suited to this job. It only lifts 650 pounds, so picking up the entire lathe is not an option. And it would be awkward.

People have recommended a rented cherry-picker. That seems like the way to go. The manual has information on how to pick the lathe up, so I can probably rig a strap on the hoist and back the lathe against the wall.

I’ll have to run over to the rental place in a while and yammer at them.

People have recommended putting pipes under the lathe and using them as rollers. That would work, but it would still be tough getting the pallet out from under the lathe. One really pathetic solution some people use is to leave their machine tools on pallets. I really don’t want a giant motorized object rocking around on a bouncy wooden platform, waiting to fall over and crush me.

Maybe I should invest in a couple of HTC mobile bases; one for each end. I put one on my 700-pound table saw, and it works perfectly. But the lathe has leveling tabs that might cause problems.

And Jeff, I am not buying a forklift, so don’t even say it!

Leo will still tell me to get a Bobcat, however.