Member postings for Sheldon Jaffe

Alan: Turning in your grave? Obviously that is PUNishment for asking the questions.

Thor - What is this drying in winter you speak of? I live in Vancouver, 160+ days of rain per year, and my house is about 300 yards from the Pacific Ocean. I'm actually about 3 feet above sea level at high tide. To compete with Alan, there's a common saying in Vancouver - people who live in Vancouver don't tan, we rust.

The ideas are great - I think I'm going to use most of them. Metal frame with levelling adjustments holding the granite slab, with 1/8" thick neoprene sheet between the lathe and the granite. I can get all this stuff easily and cheaply so why not go overboard and combine all the suggestions?

A thought struck me, so I thought I'd ask the wiser machinists than I (and that would be all other machinists). I recently replaced my Grizzly G0516 bench lathe with a larger Busy Bee B2227L bench lathe.

I will be mounting the lathe to a workbench that I built using a section of warehouse pallet racking, 8 feet long by 3ft wide. The deck of the workbench is two layers of 2"x6" tongue & groove planks fastened together with wood screws every 6" or so. The bench weighs about 700 pounds and is very, very solid.

The Grizzly G0516 lathe has two pedestals for the lathe bed, with a gap underneath. (http://www.grizzly.com/products/G0516/images/1)

I mounted the G0516 lathe to two sections of 4"x6"x3/8" rectangular steel tubing which was in turn bolted to the work bench.

The new Busy bee B2227L lathe (http://www.busybeetools.com/products/LATHE-METAL-10IN.-X-18IN.-3%7B47%7D4-HP-CRAFTEX.html) has a flat base. I'm concerned about installing the new lathe directly to the workbench. The bench is massive and solid, but it's not perfectly flat. The 2"x6" planks vary slightly in thickness.

I'm thinking of getting a 1" or 2" thick slab of granite cut to the overall dimensions of the new lathe, with bolt holes drilled to match the mounting holes on the lathe. I can get a local stone supply to cut and polish the granite on one side and end up with a pretty solid and flat surface. I'm assuming I'd probably have to shim the lathe to get it true, but once shimmed the granite is unlikely to ever change dimensions.

Is this a good idea? Is there a down side to mounting the lathe onto a granite slab? Other than cost, is there any reason not to do this? Is this overkill for a small lathe like the B2227L?

Thanks

Sheldon Jaffe

Vancouver, B.C., Canada

I've tried Futaba, but the Pulscale DRO systems were sold to Sumtak in 2004, and Sumtak was then sold to Heidenhan and none of them are able to provide anything on the older systems.

Help - I've recently installed an old Futaba Pulscale Model CH2A01 digital readout and scales for the X and Y axes on my Seig C6 lathe. The DRO and scales work beautifully except I don't have an owner's manual so I can't figure out how to change the readouts from mm to inches. The dials on my C6 lathe inn in inches and the dRO is in mm and my mental artithmetic is struggling with swicthing back and forth between the two measuring systems. The CH2A01 display has sixteen DIP switches for setting display parameters but that gives me 65000 possible settings and I don't think I can figure out which settings to change in any sort of reasonable amount of time.

Does any one out there have an operating manual for the Futaba CH2A01 display? I would be happy to purchase the manual or pay costs to have the manual scanned or photocopied.

Thanks