Originally Posted by
zipfactor
I seem to be getting a lot private messages on how the lathe is working out, so here's a short review after roughly 6 months:
I honestly think it has been a fantastic machine for the money. I've had no issues with the machine holding tight tolerances, and just yesterday ran a batch of 25 parts, with the .750" diameter being held within +/-.0005" easily. And it would be too nice to call my setup for these parts crap.
The only hitch with this machine is the lack of conversational programming, which I often use for many of the parts I run. I've found that the conversational programming with the g-wizard editor (CNCcookbook.com) has filled that gap, and is very easy to setup for the GSK 980TDc control which is essentially FANUC.
I did add a way cover between the front of the carriage to underneath the chuck. Cost was around $200, but I think it will help with wear long term. If anything, it dresses it up a bit.
I've used the tailstock quite a bit. I will say its a somewhat of a pain to drill / tap / ream with it as it is manual and a little on the heavy side to move. However, if you had a large volume to run, the toolchanger could be loaded up with the necessary drills and used instead.
I was looking at the FTL400 lathe from AutomateCNC, and would have went with that if I needed spindle orientation for live tooling. In my case, I do a lot of profiled one-off types of turnings, so the increased cost wasn't justified. Though, when I looked at these lathes in February 2018, they were $25K. Now I see they have bumped up to almost $32K!