I have been on a quest to improve my lathe. I upgraded from an old Craftsmen to a Grizzly G5979. Now I know a lot of people are thinking that was not much of an upgrade but I really like the Grizzly and have learned a lot using it. There are things about it that I don’t like and instead of spending $1000 plus on a new lathe and hope it does what I want I decided to rebuild mine. Also I have a shop built on block with a wood floor so weight is an issue with tools also. So I started with the tool rest base that I hated. It did not lock very well nor did it slide very well. I replaced it with a Delta replacement tool rest base that I rebuilt and now I have an easy sliding base with a ¼ turn lock. My next quest was to remove vibration from this machine and to change from the adjustable pulley system to true variable speed.
As of yesterday I am 90% finished with this endeavor. All I have left to do is some cosmetic stuff and mounting the controller on the headstock on a swivel. I now have a ¾ horse DC PM motor and controller that runs at 220V AC/180V DC. The lathe has a full range of speeds starting at 0. I need to replace the motor pulley as right now my max RPM is 2200 and I want a max of 3000. After much tuning, tweaking and manufacturing I have achieved almost no vibration.
This picture was taken with the lathe running at about 1800 RPM but my camera takes a picture so quick you can’t see the motion blur. I have a Nickel resting on its end and was able to not disturb it by turning the power on and cycling through the speeds.
If anyone is interested in doing anything similar I would be happy to share my resources for parts or what not.
I wonder if I voided my warranty?
As of yesterday I am 90% finished with this endeavor. All I have left to do is some cosmetic stuff and mounting the controller on the headstock on a swivel. I now have a ¾ horse DC PM motor and controller that runs at 220V AC/180V DC. The lathe has a full range of speeds starting at 0. I need to replace the motor pulley as right now my max RPM is 2200 and I want a max of 3000. After much tuning, tweaking and manufacturing I have achieved almost no vibration.
This picture was taken with the lathe running at about 1800 RPM but my camera takes a picture so quick you can’t see the motion blur. I have a Nickel resting on its end and was able to not disturb it by turning the power on and cycling through the speeds.
If anyone is interested in doing anything similar I would be happy to share my resources for parts or what not.
I wonder if I voided my warranty?
