We've been pretty quiet lately. There are a number of reasons: work, visitors from overseas, work, designing new 'bots, and work. Oh - did we mention work? But we've got a week off coming, and we have big plans!
♪♫ We wish us a Merry Christmas
We wish us a Merry Christmas
We wish us a Merry Christmas
And a Happy Birthday! ♪♫
Back in October we ordered ourselves a ShopMaster Patriot Lathe/Mill combo machine. On December 9th it finally showed up, and we've spent a couple of weeks trying to get it ready to run. The 900-pound machine was quite difficult to handle, and we spend time ready other people's reports of getting their Patriot machines set up to try and prepare ourselves. Click Back after viewing an image.
After waiting all afternoon for delivery some time between noon and 5pm the truck finally showed up at 6:40pm! The delivery driver had some issues unloading, and there was a fleeting moment when I thought the whole crate was going to slide off the lift gate, but we wrangled the crate into the garage without too much effort.
A cursory check of the crate showed that one of the steel runners under the crate had gotten mangled, but otherwise the rest of the package looked pretty good.
We took the ends off the crate and then was able to unbolt the front and back panels, which were bolted to the legs of the stand.
We pulled the wrapping off, and Ta-Daa! A CNC mill/lathe to call our very own. Actually, I think we'll call it "Milly" :-) The legs of the stand were bolted to the table, and were cheap, metric crappy bolts, so we put them off to one side after removing them, planning to replace them with decent 3/8" SAE bolts.
These are the extras that came the order. Live centers, collets, a clamp kit, end mills, and miscellaneous stuff. There were a couple of pieces on back-order, such as the 4-jaw chuck and coolant system, but that's okay. For now we need to work out how to get it on the stand, and how to make it go!
Having ordered a heavy-duty mobile shop base, as recommended by another user, we realized when the Patriot arrived that the newer model is larger than the one the other user had, so the base was too small. We decided to make our own. We took six pieces of 1/2" plywood and started to drill them out.
Sad outlet is sad
Sorry - couldn't resist the LOLCat reference. Bill Tillotson came by and installed a spiffy new 220V circuit for us, as what we had previously thought was a 220V outlet was just a funky-looking 110V outlet. Installing the outlet was a very quick job, no doubt made look easy by many years of practice - Thanks Bill!
Almost done assembling the new base - those are 200lb-rated casters, lockable of course. There's an additional benefit to installing these casters (besides mobility) which will become apparent later ...
And the base is readfy to roll - literally. The upper plywood piece is bolted to the end of the leg where the leveller used to be, and then the casters are bolted through using 1/4-20 bolts and locknuts. Hopefully it will be plenty sturdy!
Time to start the scary part - hoisting the 800lb mill/lathe onto the stand. You can see the swanky CNC connectors on the right there. We picked up a 2-Ton engine hoist from Craig's List, and here we're trying to figure out the best location to put the straps.
The first challenge is that the legs of the hoist don't fit under the steel tray. Even if the one bracket hadn't been mangled, it still wouldn't have fit, so we need to figure out how to raise Milly enough for the hoist to slide under.
Solution: 2x4s. We lifted one side and put a few sections of 2x4 under the bracket, and after clearing some working room on the other side did the same there. It was a little nerve-wracking, putting your arm under an 800lb steel tray, with one of the runners looking as warped as it did, but there were no incidents.
Success! Well ... the second time anyway - the first attempt to lift the unit didn't go well, with it leaning badly to one side - definitely brown-trousers-time. After stopping for a think, we were able to adjust the straps and leveller and get a clean lift on the unit.
From there it was pretty easy to slide the stand in under Milly, but that's thanks to the casters - without them the cross-braces on the legs would have meant that the legs of the hoist wouldn't have fitted under the bench. All we had left to do is bolt together the unit and the stand and put it in place.
Ta-Daa! Here we have Milly in place, and we're pretty damn happy about it! No injuries or damage done, and we're set to have a ton of fun during the Christmas break making chips!
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