I Finally Bought A New Lathe - Hafco Al 250G

foreign do you ever get the feeling that you've missed something something a bit obvious well the answer is yes I did get a new haircut also the old lathe is well it's gone I'm sure a lot of you expected that this day would come but between you and me I really wasn't planning on replacing the lathe anytime soon especially after seeing how it performed after I put that three horsepower motor on it I thought I'd get another year or two out of that lathe before replacing it but at the end of the day it was still a mini life and there were just some things I couldn't do especially Machining big bar stock and really the only way out of that was to get well a bigger life now frankly I'm still amazed that I was able to get it down to the workshop in one piece dragging a 180 kilo pallet over grass isn't exactly easy or quick took the better part of a day to do which with ratchets and pullings but it's here now and I'm really excited now before I go any further I do want to point out that this wasn't planned with or sponsored by half go in any way I do buy a good chunk of my tooling from them but that's mostly because they have a warehouse not too far from me that I can go and pick my stuff up from and as far as their involvement in this video was was simply them taking the money out of my bank account and them loading the lathe into the car speaking of which the lathe in question is a halfco al250g it's roughly a 10 by 20 bench lathe it's bigger than the old one but small enough to fit in the workshop so let's go to unboxed and see what we have [Music] foreign [Music] well thankfully it looks like it got here in one piece also it looks to be way bigger than our member was in the store really nice to be working on a big laser again looks like we have a mystery box of tools my favorite type of mystery box I'm gonna go ahead and guess that's the chip tray [Music] it seems to be got some instructions overall I'm pretty happy and nothing seems to be jumping out to me as being a problem which is a good start of course though I can find out if there's any problems later but first we need to get it on the workbench can't exactly use the lathe on the ground although I would take that up as a challenge now another workbench that I'm using really isn't the most suitable for bulging a laser to it but upgrading it really wasn't in the budget at least this time around it's at least rated to hold the weight of the lathe and a little bit more than that foreign of course though lifting a 160 kilo lathe really isn't as straightforward as lifting a mini lathe I had to rent out an engine hoist which seemed to do the job just fine of course though because I did rent out an engine hoist once the lathe goes down it's not moving anywhere for a very long time and the lights seemed to go down quite easily although we did manage to lose a little bit of paint alright so let's talk about the foreign grease when they ship them that's where the real value is so let's talk about the lathe it's a half Co IL 250g it's a 250 by 500 bench lathe so the biggest part this lathe can swing is 250 mil in diameter and the longest part it can hold between centers is 500 mil it's not that much more bigger than the old lathe but in terms of its overall mass and its features it leaves the old lathe in its tracks obviously I don't do a huge amount of large work but just having that extra Mouse will go a long way and helping make better parts and make my life a little bit easier now the old lathe was roughly 40 kilos give or take and this one here is 160 165 ish still relatively light for a lathe but that is a huge step up and Improvement and that should really help dampen vibrations however it's not just the extra mass that you get for your money you do get quite a lot of features that the old lathe was lacking for one you do get properly hardened Wags it's still going to be cast iron but that cast iron has been induction hardened and that's going to offer better protection against damage and wear compare this to say the mini lathe the mini lathe bed wasn't hardened and after 40 bit years of use one end was slightly more worn than the other it wasn't a huge issue yet but it certainly was going to become one in a few years time so in effect having hardened ways should hopefully prolong the lifespan of the lathe it's also nice to see the tile stock use separate these to the carriage which should hopefully keep the West separate and the wear low another big step up compared to the old lathe is this big carriage and cross slide there's a huge amount of material in both of them and they should hopefully put up with the bigger Machining forces and the compound is so much nicer than the old one it does need a bit of adjusting on the Gibbs but it's really nice to have a working compound again it's also great to have a working thread dial because the old lathe didn't have one obviously I don't do a huge amount of single point cutting but in case I do it's great to have it foreign before I move on let me quickly find the handrail knobs fingers crossed they're in here if not we already have a project on our hands okay so it looks like they included a number four more stead Center and this would be a number three dead center for the tail stock my guess is they're included for turning between centers they did include a face plate which I have right here so I'm guessing the face plate bulks to the spindle nose and the live centers go into the headstock and tail stock and from there you can turn work between centers pretty unlikely that I'll ever do it but it's nice to have it on hand and the faceplate is going to need a bit of cleaning up too foreign [Applause] okay that's going to be a Chuck key spanners looks like the outside jaw for the three jaw Chuck keys for whatever reason looks like they did include the knobs thankfully and it looks like a t-spanner for the tool post bolts that's definitely a lot better than it was before all right so as you can probably tell we do have a proper power feed the right lever is obviously for threading that will engage the half nut but the left lever is for a proper power feed now if I've read it correctly it's down for the power feed and upwards for the power cross slider obviously it's a lot more fun to move the carriage by hand but it's pretty useful to have one of these on hand as good as I think I am at moving the carriage the power feed is going to be more consistent and it should provide a much better surface finish and unlock the threading which uses a half nut to tap power this will tap power off the lead screw via a worm gear and a keyway although I'm not exactly sure which one does which we've also got a cover for the lead screw to keep the chips off and that's really useful to have now all of that is going to be driven directly from the headstock and if I'm completely honest this is the feature that made me decide to buy this lathe compared to some of the other models that I was looking at both the spindle and the lead screw are fully gear driven and both of them are connected to proper gearboxes so like a big lathe all of the pitches and speeds are going to be selected by these two levers anywhere from 0.25 millimeters up to two and a half millimeters and that should allow me to cut any standard metric thread from M1 to M22 or if I really wanted to a fine pitch m33 bolt and that's all without having to do a single gear change and for me that is really worth paying for I probably can't do any Imperial threads anymore but realistically I only had to do it about three or four times on the old lathe at in any event if I ever have to do any Imperial thread cutting I'll just buy tap and die the gearbox also sets the power feeder which as you can probably see the speeds are much better suited for power feeding than threading of course though it's not only the lead screw that has a proper gearbox but also the spindle as opposed to it being continuously variable and you know there are pros and cons to this obviously for one you are limited to the 12 available gear speeds anywhere from 80 to 1600 RPM but it is 12 speed and there is a good range of speeds here so honestly I'm not too worried it's also going to be louder than a pulley driven spindle but really when you're Machining the Machining sounds are going to be louder than the spindle so honestly I'm not too worried in return though you do get the advantage of having a mechanical gear reduction which can make even a small motor very powerful this for example only has a one horsepower motor which is only a third of that of the old Mini lathe but if I run it at say 700 RPM we're gonna double the torque since the motor runs at 1400 obviously that won't be 100 efficient but you can probably see how much torque we're gonna get that also means when we're threading at say 80 RPM we're going to have 17 and a half times the torque which means absolutely nothing is going to be able to store this live compare that to say a DC motor which is very easy to stall out at low RPM and to me that's what makes this way more worth it than having a continuously variable spindle plus the electronics are going to be a lot more simple and they won't go bust after only a year now obviously it is still being driven from pulleys that's only from the Mozart to the gearbox and there's also a gear train going down from the headstock to the secondary gearbox but thankfully we don't have to touch or modify either of them the spindle bore is also only 26 million diameter which is probably in part to the number four Morse taper but honestly I would have expected it to be a little bit bigger than that I also have to say just how nice it is to have a big Chuck to work with this one here is 130 mil in diameter which is 50 millimeters bigger than the old one just better clamping power and a larger range especially on the inside Jaws I think this can hold 55 mil stock before I have to flip to the outside Jaws compared to I think 32 on the old Chuck now this is a Sanel Sano Sanel Chuck I've owned two of them and I've used a few of them in the past and they're okay they're nothing special just okay but I think they will work for this lathe it also came with a steady rest and a follower rest but for whatever reason it is a machine Square from the casting functionally this will be fine but it is going to annoy me also let me quickly pause again because I do need to remove that backsplash which is something that I've done to pretty much every lathe that I've ever owned people ask me why I do this and it's mostly a consequence of filming all of this the backsplash has always made it a lot more difficult to light the Chuck and the work piece and frankly I'm not a huge fan of seeing that gray in the background of my shots I also need to make a cover for the motor just to stop stuff getting in there the chip guard is also a nice thought but also gets in the way of filming so that goes to and the same thing goes for the Chuck safety guard although I'm sure a lot of people remove that too now the guard as it closed also activated a switch which stopped the lathe from turning on if the guard wasn't down so that's going to need soldering up too okay well that's the inside of a geared lathe head not really sure what I was expecting but it's quite impressive foreign but there is a pool of oil in the bottom plus there is an oil glass on the front and behind the chuck from what I can tell the oil looks good so I'm not going to replace it anytime soon the gear changes are also a little bit sticky but I'm hoping that in time they will loosen up a bit okay I was about to say how nice it was to have a carriage dial again the mini lathe just didn't have one but am I going mad or is the doll showing that the carriage moves 15.5 millimeters per Revolution obviously it's probably down to the ratio of the rack and pinion but 15.5 millimeters per Revolution just sounds odd the cross slide dial also reads four diameter not radius which is not hugely uncommon but it is the opposite of what it was on the mini lathe so it'll take a bit of getting used to but in actuality what I might just end up doing is installing a dro all right so let's get it started thank you it's definitely louder than the old motor but it's not unreasonable I don't really have a quick change tool post that is suited to this size lathe so I'll stick with the four-way tool post and use some shims this is a bit of hot rolled steel okay so that was a four millimeter depth of cuss and it seemed to handle look just fine [Music] and that was one and a half mil and that was pretty easy okay let's try some power feeding foreign [Music] and that looks much nicer than what I could achieve hand feeding and just to see what would happen I've installed the old quick change tool post from the mini lathe a bit small for this and I can already see there's some flex and deflection [Music] yeah no chance that I'm doing that again it just wasn't rigid enough now unfairness it really wasn't meant for this size lathe and it's better suited for a mini lathe let's try a little bit of 4140 okay that seemed to handle it quite easily and it turned up a really good surface finish foreign finish came out even better and whilst I think of it let me check the spindle now according to the indicator I'm getting about 0.06 millimeters of run out that's about two and a half thou it's a bit more than I was hoping for but that's sort of what you'd expect from from an import three jaw Chuck and good Lord that Chuck needs to be pulled apart and cleaned it seems to be full of grit and grinding dust and that's not really what you want to see in brand new equipment and thankfully it's only three bolts to remove the chuck and we're getting about 0.01 millimeters of run out on the spindle it's pretty funny though you can tell which faces are critical and which ones aren't because the ones that are a nicely ground in and anything that isn't is left well as machined not the biggest issue but it would have taken what five seconds just to make those other services look a little bit nicer alright so let me quickly clean up the Chuck before I pop it back on the lathe and thankfully there really isn't much to cleaning these Chucks and looks like they haven't used any grease or oil so I guess it's a good thing that I am taking it apart probably helps to take the Jaws out first all right so I have no clue why there's blue paint on the back of the scroll but thankfully most of it will come off in a bath of turps and after a quick debut and a light dab of oil it goes in a lot nicer than it did before now I'm not sure how everyone else does it but every time I've rebuild a Chuck I've used oil on the front of the scroll and where the Jaws go in and out and I've used grease on the back the grease will stay in place and the chips don't tend to get into the back and the grease seems to work and I will mention now that the method of securing the chuck to the spindle ain't the greatest yes three bolts is pretty simple but actually doing it in practice is pretty difficult I think it took about 10 minutes plus a busted finger to get the chuck on finally let's try some 42 millimeter Steel I've got my hand on a more saver sleeve so I can use my old Morse taper 2 tooling [Music] and that was a half mil depth of cut it seemed to be pretty happy with it but I think the feed was a little low might try bumping it up okay so it didn't like 0.7 but once I backed it off to 0.5 it was a lot happier [Applause] and that's a surface finish I can be really proud of especially in hot rolled steel well overall I am really impressed as much as I really like that mini lathe and that thing was a beast this thing is just a big step above that does need a bit of deburring but overall I'm really happy with the purchase now between you and me I wasn't really planning on doing a huge amount of upgrades to this live but having gone over it I do have a small list of upgrades that I want to do just a few things that will make using it a little bit easier over the next five or ten or however many years I own this live obviously it's not perfect and it is a compromise but for me it's a solid platform and I should be able to make some really good parts with it over the next few years and of course I have to say a big thank you to everyone who's watching this video I obviously couldn't justify buying a big lathe like this if it wasn't for everyone who was watching and supporting my videos so a big thank you to you thanks for watching

Channel: Artisan Makes

Views: 140,518

Keywords: new lathe, i bought a new lathe, new machine day, new lathe day, mini lathe, bench lathe, hafco, hafco lathe, geared headstock, geared spindle, geared lathe, lathe gears, lathe gearbox, lathe unboxing, new lathe unboxing, my new lathe, hafco al320g, hafco al250g lathe, hafco 250g lathe, hafco al 250g lathe, bench size lathe, sieg lathe, precision matthews lathe, which lathe should I buy, I bought a new lathe, machining, machining steel

Id: euxa3Iqq4OA

Length: 25min 20sec (1520 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 17 2023