New CNC lathe day

[m_c]

So, I'm sure some of the regulars might have noticed I've been a bit quiet of late, and the lathe design/build thread I started has been deserted, but there's been a couple reasons for that.
Main one is I've spent far too much time making parts manually to keep my business venture ticking over, as I didn't want to have a gap in production/sales.

The other is that during my ordering of parts, an advert for lathes on Alibaba happened to pop-up on my Instagram feed for lathes around the size I was looking for. Further research and searching, lead me to the discovery that there are quite a few manufacturers of CNC lathes that ticked all the boxes I was looking for.

And as part of the preparation for delivery, I've had to carry out quite a few repairs to my neighbours telehandler, as the resident forklift wasn't quite rated high enough. Although after having to do some juggling earlier, it turns out the forklift rated at 2.3t can lift more than the telehandler rated at 2.5t...

The result of that, is this collection got delivered this morning -


They should have been delivered yesterday, however there were other shipments within the same container that customs decided to target, so the whole container got held for over a day, before the shipping company were allowed to unload the non-targeted shipments.

The machine is now in the workshop. It's still not in it's final spot, as I need to workout how much room the bar feeder needs, which is going to depict the final placement, and the main bar feeder tube is still in it's crate.

However, I did put a plug on it, and it powers up.



Key specs are -
36mm spindle through hole.
5.5kw servo spindle with brake on spindle.
Taiwanese hydraulic chuck.
Live tooling fitted with Polygonal turning head, which also has an ER collet in the centre.
700mm X travel
230mm Y travel
Single bar feeder.


A few things that stand out, is the pre-sales support from the supplier was brilliant. Any questions I had were answered. I was going to opt for the GSK control, but the manual supplied for the company's own panel was pretty good. Some of the translation isn't great, but it's entirely understandable, with the exception of some of the more complex geometry feed options.
After production the machine was programmed to make my sample part, and a video sent of the machine in operation.

I'm out riding bicycles tomorrow, so it's probably going to be Sunday before I get it moved in to it's final spot, and get it making parts.

For now, I'm off to read the manual to try and figure out how you home the thing...