Lathe Upgrade

[MandJ]

My wife purchased an older lathe to replace her smaller Woodfast 280, which she has to sell and I'm guessing that will be left to me, preceded by "please-hug-please" con that seems to work for her most of the time.

I was told that the lathe she bought was a Carba-Tec CT-25650 with VSD, digital speed readout, rotating / sliding head stock and some extras including two chucks, one a hardly unused Vicmarc VM120 and various other parts.

I hadn't seen much on these Lathes and only a few comments about a tendency to rock due to less than optimal footprint.

The lathe has seen little use, minimal dust in the headstock housing and almost nothing in the VFD. I dismantled the lathe, checked all wiring, added a few cable casing supports and checked the VFD, it's a Delta unit and I was able to find an PDF manual for it, Carba-Tec kindly sent me a PDF user manual for the lathe to complete the Lathe manuals.

Only a few nicks in the head unit paint, after a clean up it looked almost like new and the Lathe bed cleaned up like new as well. Because of the size of this thing, I had to reposition the lathe to the other side of the workshop, that meant modifying the dust extraction layout for other equipment and this bigger lathe. As the lathe is taller that the smaller Woodfast, the typical 100mm high platform was quickly build for short-stop (wife).

The Lathe also came with some sandbags that had been in the lower cabinet support housings, I filled 12 big plastic containers I had and fitted them into the lower housing in each side, along with another small sealed sandbag on top of the containers.

The secret to getting most heavy machinery stable starts with correctly adjust the isolating feet to share the load, there are four on each side and once they were correctly load sharing, the stability was good even without the sand, once the weight of the sand was added it really felt solid, I could bolt the lathe down if needed but at this stage it's not necessary.

I added a sealed door to the lower cabinet enclose to keep dust ingress out, most often used tools are wall mounted. I will need to make a new chisel cabinet as well - sigh.

The Lathe is very quite, quick up to speed and stops quite fast, wife started on the first bowl and loved the variable speed, the thing she was really after.

http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe01.JPG

http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe02.JPG

http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe03.JPG

http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe04.JPG

http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe05.JPG

http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe06.JPG

http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe07.JPG

A platform for little people :D
http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe08.JPG

Door seals the lower shelf - Except for the two boxes of jaws, some of the stuff that came with the lathe.
http://www.brisdance.com/Wood/CT_LATHE/CTlathe09.JPG

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Nice. I can see your wife being very happy with that! At least until/unless she decides she needs a Stubby. :D


I hadn't seen much on these Lathes and only a few comments about a tendency to rock due to less than optimal footprint.

Yeah, they're not the best design for legs. There's a reason most lathes have legs that splay to the front & back. Nevertheless, your work in weighting it down should greatly ameliorate that.

Along with a modicum of care by your wife in pre-balancing any rough blanks she mounts. Although I've noticed that most women turners don't seem to have the same gung-ho "mount it and spin it up to see how out-of-balance it is" attitude that many of us blokes seem to have... :-

[MandJ]

Thanks, yes I do all pre balancing for her. Currently designing a pivoting rotating jig for the Bandsaw to "safely" partly shape the lathe blanks to save on time and tool sharpening.

I'm over 187 cm tall and I can now grab the top of the Head unit (highest point) and really reef on it and it does not budge, when I first tried that at its previous owners location (deceased) I could rock it easily, like I said, getting that weight distributed across all support insulators was critical, not something a lot of people have a feel for or indeed know how to achieve easily, the extra weight I added was the clincher. If it ever came to that I could easily make a set of spreaders for the base but it's unlikely to need it now. We could never afford anything new and although a few years old, it feels and runs and now looks almost new, this is all she has wanted for years, no more lathe upgrades- seriously - and standard VFD and 3 Phase motor if anything ever goes wrong. BTW I think weight is around 180 kg or thereabouts without the added sand in each lower housing.

[smiife]

Nice set up , way too clean though , needs to get some shavings going there ! :U

[Colin62]

Looks good :)

[woodPixel]

Looks absolutely brand spanking new!

[MandJ]

Thanks for the reply's, unfirtunatually I'll be out of action, had abad accedient not related to in side the workshop, had a fall, tripped over and now lying in hospital looking at a hip replacement, I'm totally shattered as you can imagine. I just can't win. Life sucks.

[Paul39]

Thanks for the reply's, unfirtunatually I'll be out of action, had abad accedient not related to in side the workshop, had a fall, tripped over and now lying in hospital looking at a hip replacement, I'm totally shattered as you can imagine. I just can't win. Life sucks.

Sorry to hear about the fall. I am 78 and have many friends who have survived and recovered from knee replacement, hip replacement, lung cancer - 1/2 lung removed, spinal fusions, heart attack, stroke, etc. All were down for a while and took up to a year to recover, some better than others, but all up and around and going on with life.

I hope you will have a complete recovery and will be back in the shop in due course.

[BobL]

Thanks for the reply's, unfirtunatually I'll be out of action, had abad accedient not related to in side the workshop, had a fall, tripped over and now lying in hospital looking at a hip replacement, I'm totally shattered as you can imagine. I just can't win. Life sucks.

Blimey that's not good. Makes my bung right knee seem trivial.
Hope things improve soon so you can get back to the workshop.

Lathe looks great BTW.

[smiife]

Thanks for the reply's, unfirtunatually I'll be out of action, had abad accedient not related to in side the workshop, had a fall, tripped over and now lying in hospital looking at a hip replacement, I'm totally shattered as you can imagine. I just can't win. Life sucks.

Hi MandJ , sorry to hear about your fall , wow a bit of bad luck there !
I am sure you will be up and about soon , and we all want to see what you are going to turn on your nice new lathe , at least you can draw up a few plans as to what to do when you do get back In to turning ! ...............get well soon ..!

[MandJ]

Thanks again for the words of sympathy. Would have had to lay for 3 days in a ward with the head of the femur broken off, pain was a 13, told scale only goes to 10, I sugested they revise it. Anyway, they did opp following night, fitted a new ball, the socket was ok, bones were not soft, quite hard really he said. Advantage of partial hip replacement is the ball is huge and less likely to dislocate, no trouble putting full weight on it the next day, going home tomorrow, 3 months before it heals enough to allow full movement, whatever that may be. All this just 3 and half months after my having prostate removed, and its the same leg as my bad knee that will need replacing, Life sucks.