Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

This forum is dedicated to those hobbyists with the 3-in-1 metalworking machines. Mill-Drill-Lathes. Tips, techniques, modification and use of these machines is topical.

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LX Kid
Posts: 213
Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2011 3:33 pm
Location: Tampa, Fl

Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

Post by LX Kid »

I was wondering how many are owners of Grizzly 3-In-One's or Grizzly bench lathes? What mods have you done to make your better? What things have you found that you don't like? There are a lot of clones out there but was just wondering how many of us are Grizzly, in particular, owners?

Got pics of mods that you care to share?

Image[/URL]

Modded a bolt to fit my Grizzly compound for mounting my Shars 250-100 QCP.

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Last edited by LX Kid on Sun May 17, 2015 8:50 am, edited 3 times in total.
Jawn
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Location: Canton, GA

Re: Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

Post by Jawn »

Not a 3-in-1, but I have a G0602 lathe (10x22).

Out of the box, the faceplate and 4-jaw chuck needed work to true up, had a visible wobble to them.

As to improvements, not much so far...

1. Notched the backsplash to allow the carriage to move far enough left to face a backplate.

2. Replaced the cap screw for the belt/gear cover with a knob screw and slotted the hole so opening the cover is easier to open.

3. Installed a quick change toolpost (used a Phase II 251-111 set)

What I don't like?

1. Paint quality is crap... flakes off if you look at it sideways.

2. two-bolt compound mount is flexy

3. Idler pulley is noisy.

That said, I'm pretty happy with it. I have a few other mods in mind, chief among them adding a reverse for the leadscrew to cut left hand thread. It comes with a gear set that lets you cut dang near any thread pitch under the sun... would be nice to cut left hand too!
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LX Kid
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Location: Tampa, Fl

Re: Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

Post by LX Kid »

Jawn wrote:Not a 3-in-1, but I have a G0602 lathe (10x22).
Installed a quick change toolpost (used a Phase II 251-111 set)
What I don't like?
Two-bolt compound mount is flexy

That said, I'm pretty happy with it. I have a few other mods in mind, chief among them adding a reverse for the leadscrew to cut left hand thread. It comes with a gear set that lets you cut dang near any thread pitch under the sun... would be nice to cut left hand too!
Do you have a pic or two?
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LX Kid
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Location: Tampa, Fl

Re: Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

Post by LX Kid »

Replaced carriage Gib set screws with bolt and nuts. (Actually used threaded rod and cut to fit. M8x1.25) Made it much more easy to make adjustments.

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LX Kid
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Re: Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

Post by LX Kid »

My carriage pivot gear was not running true on the rack. After running a piece of paper between rack and gear I saw where the "squeeze" was and shimmed between the carriage gear box at the back two mounting bolts. Also filed the gears teeth valleys to smooth out roughness. Works a whole lot better!

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Jawn
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Location: Canton, GA

Re: Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

Post by Jawn »

Here's the knob for the belt cover. Originally it had a cap screw. I notched the cover and replaced the screw.
beltcoverknob.jpg
Here's the backsplash notched to allow the carriage to move further to the left.
notched-backsplash.jpg
Last but not least, here's the carriage all the way to the left thanks to that notch, also shows the quick change toolpost.
carriage-travel.jpg
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LX Kid
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Location: Tampa, Fl

Re: Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

Post by LX Kid »

Very nice! My Grizzly came with the belt cover knob but unfortunately, for me, they don't come with a chip shield. They sure keep things tidy around the shop with a chip shield.
pete
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Re: Grizzly Bench Top Lathe or 3-In-One Owners

Post by pete »

Not exactly bought from Grizzly, but that's sure what I should have done if I'd been a lot smarter. It was bought less than 50 miles from Grizzly's head office though. Place called The House of Tools in Langley B.C. They've been long out of business now, and after buying that lathe and and X2 mill I can sure see why. But it was exactly the same as a G0516 and painted blue and white, best thing I did to it was give it away. Many, many issues with how poorly it was machined. You'd almost have to do it on purpose to make it that bad. Just a few highlights. Tailstock pointing uphill over .009" in 2", add the length of a drill chuck, and a drill, and it was well over .025 high at the drill tip. Instantly broke the end off every center drill I tried to use in it. The tee slotted milling table was severely warped because they didn't stress relieve it before machining, and it never should have passed the most simple of eyeball inspections. The cross slide was machined out of alignment in both directions, so unless you were willing to shim any milling vice or parts you were clamping to on that cross slide, or even more so on that warped table, then you certainly couldn't do anything that needed even a lowball level of accuracy.

But on top of that, long after I bought it, I then decided to check Grizzly's prices while picking up an order there. For what I spent trying to keep my money in Canada, I could have driven less than 50 miles each way, added about $20 and bought TWO fully equipped G0516 machines from Grizzly. And I'm not exaggerating those numbers at all. Plus the Grizzly machines come with the mount to attach the mill to the rear of the lathe, that tee slotted milling table, and a quick change tool post with 3 tool holders. All of that I either had to buy extra from that House of Fools, oops I meant Tools, or I made a trip down to Grizzly and bought the tool post and 10 tool holders from them. House of tools even tried to charge me for a traveling steady and the fixed steady even though there catalogue clearly stated they were included with the lathe. On my last visit to them about 9 months after I bought that lathe I finally got both steady's because up till then they were "out of stock". I'll admit my additude towards the store manager that day wasn't quite my very best.

But due to the job I was doing I was working almost all the time. Very very little time off. So it ended up being over a year before I finally got that lathe and mill up on a bench and then started running some accuracy checks. And surprise, surprise, since it was just past House of Tools one year warranty period, they refused to do a single thing about the issues I found. In fact I never did finish doing a full set of accuracy checks on it since I got so disgusted I just gave up after finding what I did. I don't know what the run out numbers were on the spindle nose, or the spindles Morse Taper. We can probably guess though, if the rest was junk then why would they all of sudden do a great job in one single area? How straight was the lathe bed? I don't even want to guess at that. You do get what your willing to pay for with machine tools, but there is a bare minimum level of accuracy that is required. That lathe wasn't even in the same ball park as what my dog knows about accuracy.

Grizzly has more than enough buying power that they demand and get much better quality than the lower number buyers do. While the equipment at various places might all be built at the same factory, it's NOT all the same.

Yes I could have re-machined and properly fixed all the problems I found, but as I said, I got so disgusted I just gave up on it. That machine taught me a very good and very expensive lesson though. I will never again buy any machine tool That doesn't come with a proper test certificate. Without it then it doesn't matter how inaccurate it's built. All they have to say is you bought a lathe and that's what you got. My 11" X 27" that I bought to replace that G0516 I made sure to check that it would come with that test certificate, and as soon as I got it in the house I slapped a set of DTI's on it and ran a full series of proper tests even while it was still sitting on the floor. All my test figures came out maybe 10 - 20% better than the factory's recorded numbers, so I do know they did run the proper tests. My numbers were probably a bit better from either taking more time, or using much better test equipment than they did. But, anyone reading this needs to remember that not all manufacturers and especially the Chinese one's actually do any real test no matter what there test certificate states. You do have to check and verify that those numbers are correct. Vertex for example is a fairly well respected Taiwan manufacturer of machine tool accessories. All there rotary tables and dividing heads come with a test certificate that's all neatly filled out. There's a guy over on the HSM forum who's in the U.K. He bought 20 of Vertex's 6" rotary tables and added stepper motors so they could be used as a 4th axis on a CNC. I've read more than enough of his post's that I can completely trust what he's saying. He said every single one of those 20 tables had the exact same numbers written down in the supplied test certificate. So don't blindly trust any certificate or any manufacturer. I've even double checked some of my Starrett and Mitutoyo equipment. It always passes well within spec, but it never hurts to check. And honest mistakes can even be made on those certificates. If you don't check you don't know for sure.

Pete
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