We’d love for it to live at HSBNE for the foreseeable future. But either way its going to be bought, its too good of a deal to let it slide.
It’s of comparable size/capability to Jimmys big grey lathe we currently have, but in better condition.
It currently has no controller hooked up, but it did have the lathe equivalent of the controller on Hulk, a Fanuc 6. Which means, we can gain some insight on how to fit more modern control hardware on these old machines. Then once we have a little more knowledge, we can go through a similar process with Hulk with more confidence.
So my suggestion is, we sell the Big Lathe, and spend that on some other gear for the shop, and replace it with this CNC Lathe.
I suggested buying it and will be more then happy to pour all my knowledge into that thing to get it running on a modern controller.
Very awesome addition to the shop!
On the 27/1/15 and 10/2/15 meetings a proposal was put up that either the space keep it or we sell it and he get half of it towards his membership. I recall us voting to keep it and not sell it, but given I can’t find meeting minutes I’m not sure what happened.
That being said, it has been left at HSBNE for over 2 years since then, it is not unreasonable for the org to take ownership of it at this point but if someone wants to double check with Jimmy that’d be fine.
If its a case of space, i think we can fit all the lathes with some rearranging. I think theres value in having multiple lathe options. I’m pretty sure we could fit 4 lathes in the shop.
So I’d rather see us keep both
We’re not particularly hurting for cash so I dont see why metal shop cant get the tooling it needs out of general funds.
I think getting rid of the 2 small lathes and that mill/lathe combo would be better. Keeping a solid large lathe and having the large cnc would be much more practical than having 1 large lathe that cant be used for the forseeable future with 2 much less useful small lathes.
Blue Lathe: The smallest blue lathe is, to my knowledge, dead? If it can be sold, sure.
Medium Lathe: The main ‘intermediate’ size lathe is our workhorse that everyone uses atm.
Lathe/Mill Combo: The lathe mill combo is Eris’.
Green Lathe: The green lathe also belongs to a member. (Ollie?)
Big Lathe: The big lathe is HSBNE owned, member donated, last i checked?
CNC Lathe: awesomeness, but not HSBNE owned.
I would like to see us end up with the Medium, Big and CNC Lathes. That means HSBNE has two lathes it owns and access to a cool CNC one.
I think the Lathe/Mill Combo should go home? Can/does anyone use it?
The Green Lathe should go home at some point I’m assuming? Whats the status/plan on it?
We should sell or trash the little Blue Lathe.
The original one that HSBNE bought? If so, that hasn’t been around for ages. Not sure what happened to it.
This has a few insert tools as well as a right hand and left hand diamond HSS holder, one boring bar and a parting tool holder. Missing is HSS for the diamond tool holders and parting tool ~50$
I think that just eats space and should leave. @Eris What are your thoughts on that?
I think there was an email on the exec list saying he is happy for us to sell it, half to him, half to HSBNE.
The big one (Jimmys) is very clunky, hard to work, imperial and utterly out of alignment. It needs new jaws(pricey) and most likely a new main bearing. A heap of work and a bunch of money.
I think the grey lathe (Midsized one originally bought with the mill) we got covers really 99% of jobs. I would rather go smaller then bigger. So that the space ends up with the grey one, a smaller one (which we don’t have) and hosts and has access to the CNC one.
G’day,
At $1000 bucks this a good pick-up. I wonder how much effort the Linux-CNC to set would be with a mesa card. It’s been done ‘out-there’ but is there someone at hackerspace keen to do it? http://www.mesanet.com/
I have set-up and used Linux-CNC on a 3(4) axis router but, only on a parallel port.
cheers
Brendon
Yeah its a solid deal. We’re going to have a look this afternoon. The guy said something vague about not selling the servo drivers with it, which would make it not such a great deal, maybe still worthwhile, but we’ll see I guess.
We’ll have a good chat and get all the details laid out this afternoon.
G’day,
Thanks for the invite, I’m in Mackay atm,
I’ve never used it myself but if you have a card or seen it or used it, i would be still keen to catch up later.
Brendon
“The Ball” from IRC was the guy that used to use Mesa products on his CNC machines. I’ve always wanted to get a 5i25 7i76 combo but I have always either been in a state of no-time or no-money.
Just for clarification purposes, this machine will be privately owned and loaned to the space according to a conversation I had with Sven today.
I personally think the space should be offering to purchase it when it’s working as relying on loaned tools for making sure we have all the tooling we need is problematic at best.
I agree with you Brendon. It’s not a good situation when the space becomes a depository for personally-owned stuff that people wish to own but can’t keep at home, so it comes to the space.
But then people have to obtain the Pope’s blessing to use it in advance because it’s privately owned. Then there’s all the issues and arguing over who did what or didn’t do, and who can use it, a select few inducted to use it and when and on it goes. And then the space is asked to invest in tooling for machine tools we don’t own. The space should own the machine tools that are housed in the metal shop, in my opinion. The space is supposed to be a community workshop for all members. It’s the best place on earth to come and make stuff. Lets not ruin it by making it a personal private workshop. That’s my first and final 2 cents worth and I won’t be engaging further in a thesaurus-like online argument with anyone about it.
