The Home Machinist!

After months of research and patience, I finally got it. They just arrived in the US. Undisputed king of the minilathes. 8X17, 275 lbs, 1.3hp, digital tach & speed controls with dynamic braking (will stop & reverse from 1000rpm in 1 second), dedicated powered carriage & crossfeed, camlock tailstock, chip shield over leadscrew, steel gearset with 127 tooth gear (for true inch & metric threading).

I'm so glad I waited for this one to arrive. It's everything I was looking for in a compact machine. Now to clean it up and plug her in...
More pics to follow if interested...

Jeff

Nice looking, that is sold by Traverse correct?

Once you clean it and set it up please share more pictures with some close-ups of the dials and other special features that you may think interesting.

Also after doing some testing also share you experiences please!

Congratulations !!

Yes, Travers is the only one that has it. I'm cleaning it as we speak. They went a little overboard with the anticorrosion stuff. I'm having a problem though. It is tripping every circuit breaker in the house. It starts up fine at it's 100rpm default speed, but as soon as I speed it up it trips the 20 amp breakers. I can't beleive this thing is pulling more than 20 amps with no load. My house is wired with GFI breakers everywhere except the central air conditioning and my welder recepticle. It must be leaking some current to ground. Guesss I'll have to put in a dedicated recepticle with a standard breaker.

Jeff

I forgot to mention, there is an excellent review here:
http://www.mini-lathe.com/m4/C4/c4.htm

I had a G400 Grizzly that took naphtha (Coleman stove fluid).

That was the only thing I had at hand that was doing nothing seating on a shelf for years. It removed it very quickly.

Got to remember the flammability of solvents.

Are you positive about the power compound? That's a feature generally found only on very large machines. Many small machines don't have power even on the cross slide, and the carriage is powered by the lead screw, via the threads. Better machines use a key in the leadscrew for power feed, or individual feed rod in place of the lead screw.

Not to belabor the point, but in all my years in the shop (commercial), I have never seen a powered compound.

Nice little lathe! Hope it serves you well.

Harold

I had one on a large Italian lathe in the middle east. I seem to remember 36" swing on a 15' bed.

Only one I had ever seen - and it saved our butts more times than not.

never seen one since.

no way that should trip a 20 amp breaker. Jim and I have 2 lathes - a 10" and a 9" both running on one circuit with no problems.

If you have a leak tripping the GFI, then fix the lathe, don't fix the circuit.

bet they have fitted delta capacitors to try and fix the od order harmonics that these type of drives produce



delta caps two are wired one from each power line and earth , if they leak you get an unbalance between the power lines hence a ground interrupt



GET that machine tested ASAP by a qualified Sparks

Yep! I agree. The ½ horse motor (an old Craftsman) I use for sharpening toolbits used to have a serious voltage leak to ground. Once dismantled, I found an insulated wire trapped between the cover shell and an end bell. Enough voltage was leaking to be detected, but not a direct short. Simply moving the wire solved the problem.

I'm of the opinion that there has to be either an internal short, or there's some serious friction somewhere. I also wonder, is it kicking out the starting windings, assuming it has a starting circuit?

Harold

I'm with Harold, I have seen one Danichi Lathe with powered compound
in 39 years.

That beast was used for turning submarine propeller shafts.
Don't remember the specs., but must have turned 6' dia. by 40' long.

The compound must have had a foot or more of travel.

The compound had four bolts, and bar clamps, similar to a planer head
to hold the tools down. The tools were definately two handers.

Boring bars went up with the crane.

The steady rest had no top, but relied on the weight of the workpiece to hold it'self down.

Harold;

Working in commercial shops dosen't mean we haven't seen everything.

I was flamed once for stating no lathe relied on the compound for diameter setting when using the taper attachment.

Someone quickly posted a picture of some entry level lathe that worked as such.

I was flamed two other times that I agree, I was wrong.

Kap

Reading the review link posted by JHanko it states that the lathe runs on DC.

"A powerful 1000W DC reversible motor with awesome torque"

And power cross-feed (not powered compound). A machine having something like that in such small size would be extremely rare, actually unique.

My two cents about tripping the 20 amp breaker are that it may be a problem with the rectifying diodes or the capacitors used to flatten the half of the wave into pseudo DC.

The Harold's description of a crazy wire comes to mind also. Maybe some debris left after assembly, who knows!

I'll be on the phone right away JHanko, sorry to hear about this.
Keep us posted.

I don't see a thread dial. Does it come with one?

Sorry, you are correct. I meant to type carriage, not compound.

Jeff

No' it doesn't. I think the chip shield & the power carriage & cross feed selector screw up that possibility.

Jeff

The only time it trips the breaker is when I press the buttons to change speed or to reverse. I tried using an extension cord with the ground prong removed, and it worked fine.
For safety's sake, I ran the lathe on an extention cord with my Fluke 87 interupting the ground circuit. I was not able to, at any time, including while changing speeds and reversing, detect any current flow to ground. Not even 1ma. My circuit breakers have a 4ma. GFI trip current. I suspect that the speed controller is thowing noise on the line, which the GFI breaker is enterpreting as some kind of fault. Thanks for the concern.

Jeff

BTW: I am a qualified Sparky. Have been for over 20 years.