Grizzly Growl-Tech - A new digital direct-drive lathe

[Jon Rista]

I know that Nova has a direct drive lathe, and I think it is also fully digitally controlled. With the troubled Teknatool is having in the US, I've wondered about its longevity. From what I have heard its an excellent lathe and the direct drive is very nice (as direct drive things tend to be!)

I received an email about another digital direct drive lathe today. From Grizzly. I don't know how to rank Grizzly in terms of overall quality, but, it is interesting that it is a digital direct drive lathe with three horsies of power as well:

24-1/2" Heavy-Duty Wood Lathe - Grizzly Industrial, Inc.

<h1>G0995 24-1/2" Growl-Tech™ Heavy-Duty Wood Lathe</h1><h2>Upgrade your woodturning with advanced digital controls and a switch reluctance motor for smooth and consistent power.</h2><p>Revolutionize your woodturning with increased capacity, smooth and consistent power, and advanced digital...

www.grizzly.com

The whole package deal is pretty interesting, given all the features it has. From what I can tell, it has a swing-away tailstock bed, more akin to the Robust than most other swing-aways (looks like it rotates out of the way, rather than actually swings.) It has an outboard bed, that can be used not only on the opposite side of the heastock, but one of the photos showed it attached to the FRONT of the bed, allowing the tailstock to be moved farther out...I guess for really LARGE diameter turnings? For outboard turning at the headstock, it looks like it has some kind of tool rest extender. Also includes a chuck guard and a dust collection hood that attaches to the tailstock on an adjustment rod.

Feature wise, I haven't even seen some of these. For the price, less than four grand right now, its got a heck of a lot of premium-level features.

Don't know about materials, and how well the lathe handles things like dampening vibration and all of that. Don't know if anyone uses Grizzly much, or if anyone reviews them. Would be interesting to hear how it really performs and whether there are things like vibration problems, or not.

Anyway, interesting lathe, with some interesting features.

 

[Steve Tiedman]

Counterpoint-

I don't know... Call me old-fashioned. Call me anachronistic. I own 2 lathes, both of which have separate bolt-on motors controlled by cabled electronic controls, and deliver the power by belts and pulleys. If something fizzles and dies, I buy a new off-the-shelf motor or controller and get back to work. Even in 50 years when I'm 106 years old, these two machines will have the ability to serve me. In 100 years they can still be in operation. Heck, if society ever leaves electricity, mine could easily be converted to tredle lathes.

From the product description-

• Computerized 3 HP Digital Variable Reluctance Motor (DVR): Eliminates the need for belts and pulleys, saving up to 8-% power compared to traditional lathes.
• Push-Button Spindle Reversing Switch: For quickly and easily reversing the spindle.
• 8-Programmable Speeds and Programmable Assisted Braking: Precise control over spindle speed and quick, efficient stopping.

(And the linked video states rpm from 100-5000! Yikes! Why? But at least the owner's manual was proudly written in the US of A.)

What happens in ___ years when the motor or soft touch electronics dies? Do I haul the machine to a scrap metal dealer, and pay them a fee to recycle the electronics?

This lathe could be the cat's pajamas, but i don't go for the concept of integrating high tech electronics directly inside the headstock. I don't want to attach a chuck directly to the motor shaft. I wasn't sold on it from Nova, and I'm not attracted to it here. Yes, there are plenty of Nova DVR owners of 20 problem-free years out there, but that electronic system won't last forever, unlike the cast iron it's built inside of, which can serve multiple human lifetimes. (There are lots of old Olivers out there from your grandpappy's era driven by modern motor systems.)

Neat setup, but not for me, thanks.

 

[Tim Hunter]

I prefer the low speed torque multiplication enabled by belted final drive.

Tim

 

[John Whitley]

I got the promo emails from Grizzly about this lathe as well. It looks *a lot* like it’s a “white label” build roughly based on the Nova Nebula, to Grizzly’s specifications. Just as another Grizzly lathe model was apparently built by Harvey, similar to the T-60S (apologies, I forget which model number that is/was).

Specifics that make me think this:

• The headstock profile matches the Nova line (Galaxi, Nebula)
• The round bar with hole for locking the headstock down to the ways is also the Galaxi/Nebula design.
• The indexed, rotating headstock
• The control panel design, with the characteristic sealed “blister” style buttons
• The very fact that it’s a DVR lathe, so far a signature drive design not replicated anywhere else

That said, there’s a fair bit new and/or different here too.

• The comparator brackets and “please remove me” guard cage
• The dust hood designed for the comparator brackets
• The extension bed profile is different than any recent Nova model
• No cross-beam between the leg assemblies (w.r.t. the Nebula)

 

[Steve Tiedman]

That said, there’s a fair bit new and/or different here too.

• The... “please remove me” guard cage

Ah, Griz call that the "chuck guard". The what?! 3 decades and I've never heard it called a chuck guard. I went in deeper looking for something that protected a mounted chuck from... something. Your fingers, maybe?

 

[John Whitley]

Ah, Griz call that the "chuck guard".

My Harvey T-60S came with one (cough, "spindle guard", cough), so I had to do the obligatory search about these. Over the years, I've learned a lot about best practices that way, things like "what's the little knurled screw post that fits into my router lift for?" For these cages, the best response was along the lines of "this is the year I may finally send it to recycling."

 

[Kent Reisdorph]

I think I'd go with the Harvey T60 for that kind of money.

 

[John Whitley]

I think I'd go with the Harvey T60 for that kind of money.

I'm obviously biased by owning a T-60S which I've found to be an outright delightful lathe. So while I nominally agree, I do think it's interesting that Grizzly appears to be shipping a higher-trim DVR lathe than any Nova model. 3HP DVR, 24.5" swing, lots of included accessories (e.g. bed extension), a heavier frame build at 617lb, etc. I think there's definite competition there, depending on which "boxes" a particular turner wants to check off the most. And that's a really good thing!

(but real talk: the foot pedal thing is just ... weird. A magnetic pendant folks, up out of the chips, please.)

 

[john lucas]

I'm with Steve. I was a nova user when the new lathe came out where the spindle was the motor. I was wanting to upgrade and looked at it very seriously. I had seen another company that did tgst go out if business after just a few years. How would you get it repaired? I went with powermatic. There isn't anything on tgat machine that I can't either rebuild or replace with aftermarket parts. It will keep on running even if powernatic goes out of business.
Grizzly is a good company with good factory service. This will probably make someone a good lathe.

 

[BobCoates]

Saw that also, question who would use and need 5000 rpm. Have a PM3520b and seldom run above 1200.

 

[Jon Rista]

Saw that also, question who would use and need 5000 rpm. Have a PM3520b and seldom run above 1200.

I've run at about 4000rpm for pens and other very small items. Surface speed for a pen-sized, wand-sized, thin finial sized piece are not that high at such RPMs. For large items, I don't turn much past 1200-1500rpm. But I turn a lot of stuff from large to pretty small.

 

[Jon Rista]

Counterpoint-

I don't know... Call me old-fashioned. Call me anachronistic. I own 2 lathes, both of which have separate bolt-on motors controlled by cabled electronic controls, and deliver the power by belts and pulleys. If something fizzles and dies, I buy a new off-the-shelf motor or controller and get back to work. Even in 50 years when I'm 106 years old, these two machines will have the ability to serve me. In 100 years they can still be in operation. Heck, if society ever leaves electricity, mine could easily be converted to tredle lathes.

This is a very interesting take. I generally agree with you, about the upgradeability, the ease of replacing motors, belts, etc. The value in that is almost incomparable if you expect your lathe to last lifetimes.

I have never used a direct-drive lathe with all the electronics built right into the headstock, so I can't really speak to it. I have worked with direct drive for some things, including for astrophotography, and at least in that arena, with absolutely encoded motors and the like its a phenomenal thing. However, supreme accuracy is paramount in that arena as well, and direct drive offers some key advantages there. Especially for very large scopes, they are able to deliver precise power to move big things by very fine amounts.

For a lathe, perhaps those advantages are unnecessary.

 

[Steve Tiedman]

Another thing that needs to be compared with this kind of technology (regardless if it is built into a lathe or any other gizmo) is private ownership (me and you) vs. organizational ownership who may be able to amortize/write off the acquisition cost and service life of the device against annual federal taxes. I'm even less of an accountant than I am a mathematician (manipulation of numbers is not my strong suit), but such technology could, if I understand such financial concepts, be nearly painlessly discarded by an organization at the end of its service life. So, maybe a DVR-driven gizmo makes financial sense to an organization who can manipulate its value-to-life ratio, but that doesn't work for a garage hobbiest who expects that technology to last, well, for their "forever".

 

[Richard Coers]

I bet lifting the head off and turning it around is a real task!

 

[John Whitley]

I bet lifting the head off and turning it around is a real task!

Nope; it's an indexed, rotating headstock, up to 180°.