Hi,
I have recently taken delivery of a Tormach 1100. It came on a truck, on a pallet, with the create of wood the machine was bolted into on top of the pallet. Neither me nor the delivery guys had any way to lift the machine and get the pallet out from under it.
In every delivery video and photo sequence I've seen, no-one else has had a pallet under their machine - just the piece of wood that forms the bottom of the crate!
Tormach (and others) show how you cut down the wooden base to fit a parallel legged engine stand in there to lift the thing. I couldn't do this because I'd have to cut a shipping pallet and the wooden crate base.
It was a hell of a performance involving false raised floors, jacks, and all sorts of other nonsense to get the damned thing off this double height, too wide, platform.
Has anyone else been left with a pallet under the crate to contend with?
Even better, the first one was delivered broken which I didn't notice until a couple of days after it was on the stand when I had time to look at setting it up! So I had to get it off the stand to the floor, repeat the whole performance with the new one, then get the broken one back on the double height base... I was thoroughly sick of the sight of both of them it by the time I'd finished. And it's still taking up a quarter of my workshop waiting to be picked up.
It arrived with a bent table splash guard (which I noticed when uncrating) but also the table extension casting wasn't screwed down, the Y axis motor had been knocked out of its tie-down, and the electrical cabinet had taken a big hit that sheared off the top two bolts that tie it to the column. I only noticed that when I opened the cabinet looking for something and saw some sheared bolts on its floor. Then I saw it was leaning to the right, which wasn't obvious to me before. Then looking in the cable tray one of those screws was sheared off too.
So the delivery, unboxing, and setup were not the exciting time I'd hoped for. In fact I was suffering some buyer's remorse and had to force myself to check everything else and start putting it together.
I will say the quick response of the importer was impressive - he sent me another one straight away. I wrote to him on a Saturday night and the new one arrived on the next Tuesday afternoon. I thought I'd have to wait another 4-6 months for one to come from China but he had a spare for some reason. He also had a lot of good advice about the tweaks necessary to get it going in Australia. As far as the broken on is concerned he checked the crate wasn't damaged when it got off the boat but didn't open it - it came straight to me. The crate wasn't damaged when it got here either. So no complaints about the importer - I believe he did his best for me.
Interestingly the broken one which should have been newer than his spare was 6 months older - it was 15 months old by the time I got it. If these thing sell like they seem to, I can't see how I could get a 15 month old machine as 'new'.
David.