Precision Matthews PM-1440GT Lathe In-Depth Walkthrough and Demo

[Music] [Applause] this is my dream precision metal lathe Gavin gear here for making with metal calm this is the precision matthews PM 1440 GT lathe in this video i'm gonna give you the most in-depth source of information about this lathe i'm gonna demonstrate every feature talked about every specification turn every knob i'm gonna give you the next best thing to you being right here running this lathe i'm also going to talk about some of the upgrades that i performed and some of the minor feedback that I've given to precision matthews about things that I've either improved or relied for them to improve so buckle up your seat belt check out the chapter markers in the video this is going to be about this lathe and I will do some demos but I have good news I'm not going to teach you how to run a lathe in this video I have a whole multi year series the fundamentals of lay that's coming up and it's going to be featuring this precision matthews PM 1440 GT in addition to that i will also be publishing a fundamentals of mill video featuring my precision matthews PM 949 TV i have partnered with precision matthews to bring you this content if you want to know more about what that means click on the link in the video description this is awesome I am totally happy I've built three custom rifles with this lathe I've built precision tooling I've turned ABS I've turned Delrin aluminum multiple alloys I've turned carbon steel I've turned stainless steel I've over the last six months gotten a lot of experience and now is the time to share with you the story of the precision matthews PM 1440 GT how did I end up with this lathe okay so I started machining back in the 80s with Grandpa and he really inspired me to want to do my own work I later studied mechanical engineering and in the curriculum I did more machining learn more of the theory learn more about metallurgy and everything then eventually I decided I needed my own metal lathe great choice everybody needs a metal lathe I went through several American machines I started with a South Bend and then upgraded to a Logan which was really a great upgrade from a 10-inch machine to an 11 inch machine 11 by 36 and then I ended up inheriting grandpa's South Bend lathe love these machines but when you want to do ultra precision work and you want to have more capacity there were some things that I was really looking for the first was ultra precision I knew that when I'm building custom rifle and 1/10 of a thousandth of an inch matters I needed something that was super tight and super precise speeds and power and capacity was another thing I wanted through to inch through spindle capacity I wanted at least two horsepower I wanted a geared head design so that I had a wide range of speeds that would be more appropriate for carbide tooling which can handle faster feeds and speeds and I also wanted accessories accessories options features my Logan lathe was great but I never had a good steady rest for it I didn't have a micrometer carriage stop and there were some other things that I had to build that just it wasn't quite where I wanted it to be and this is where talking with my gunsmithing mentor Gordy critters I decided I wanted a new machine this is a big investment and I also decided I wanted a Taiwanese machine if you're looking at a new metal lathe and you're not spending $100,000 or more it's likely going to be made in China or it's going to be made in Taiwan and a lot of guys do great work on the Chinese made equipment usually there's some tweaks that you've got to do some kind of fine points rough edges that you've got to sand off the Taiwanese a machinery is the next step up you'll see later in this video I'm gonna give you a full guided tour I'm also going to give you an evaluation of the precision of the machine you'll see firsthand this is an ultra precision machine this thing runs nice it's got a nice finish it's well this is a machine I know to custom rifle builders that use this machine as well Travis Radel from our bros and Bill Maher from rifle shooter comm and there's a reason this is the only Taiwanese made machine with a two inch through spindle in a short spindle 15 and a half inches and this machine performs well it's also available at a very good price point considering the level of precision and the features and that's why I partnered with precision Matthews is because I knew that this was the machine that I wanted and I also knew that precision Matthews is different because of Matt Matt is very involved with this customers he's very involved online he's flying personally over to the factories overseas to make sure that everything is right he's gotten exclusive deals on things like this Taiwanese two inch through spindle capacity machine and that is how I ended up where I am at here so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna start with the guided tour and then I will run through some demo scenarios will test the precision we'll talk about accessories and then wrap things up let's get going okay let's start down here at the bottom I got the cast iron leveling feet which work great rolled lathes into place on three-quarter inch black pipe tighten the bolts down it lifted the lathe off of the pipe super convenient way to move the machine the base itself is included with the lathe the lathe comes in a crate bolted down to the base and I absolutely love that you just use a crane or a hoist to lift the lathe off of the pallet and then I put it on pipes rolled it into place it is pretty much ready to go which is great so the stand is made out of steel it's very solid it's nicely painted with epoxy paint it says dark gray finish here there's a large chip tray I really like how this is arranged because the entire chip tray comes out really easily to dump the contents into a trash can and then it just slides right back in place there's a drain here where your coolant if you're using your coolant circulation system is going to drain right back into the reservoir where the pump is also located that's on the right side here in the stands in the base on the left-hand side towards the back you've got the electrical panel an electrical for the PM 1440 GT is laid out very immaculately and in the owner's manual you'll find exactly where to hook up the AC power this is 240 volt single-phase there's also the option to have three-phase power some people prefer a three-phase motor for a little bit better surface finish under certain conditions and then around the end here we've got the serial tech let's move our way up okay let's start on the headstock side so here we've got the side cover it comes off with these two thumb screws here and then I've actually enlarged the opening for the outboard side of the spindle to accommodate this custom outboard spider it's a time machine this is great for when you need to support longer work or if you have a rifle barrel that needs to be precisely aligned prior to the machining and chambering I have a separate video on that upgrade in the making of the spider it's got a pinch clamp design so you've got one bolt to take it off non marring for the outboard spindle section very nice let's take a look at the main controls next okay so starting at the top we've got the spindle speed control levers low medium and high ranges for speeds per range yields 12 speeds total from 50 rpm on the low end which is great for something like power tapping all the way up to 2,000 rpm which would be great for things like polishing and sanding or really high speed turning very quick to set speeds which I absolutely love then we've got the feed Direction control knob and so pointing to the left we've got the carriage power feeding to the left and the cross slide feeding in and if we switch that to the right the carriage will go to the right and the cross slide will power feed back out towards you there's the coolant pump motor you just turn that on and then meter your coolant with the ball valve this lamp here tells you if there's our going to the lathe and I just have a panel right next to the lathe and flip my breaker off at the end of the day we've got the jar button which is just going to turn the spindle based on how long we hold in the button there and then the panic stop button which at any time we just hit that everything's going to stop you want to have your foot next to the brake as well it's always a good good idea to use the brake when you need to quickly stop the spindle down here we've got our feed controls and there's two types of feeds you want to think about when you engage power feeds that's going to correspond to very fine feeds per spindle revolution either for the carriage or for the cross slide and then when you're threading that has to do with when you engage the half nuts which is usually a faster speed so you're going to want to look at how much food you want per spindle revolution or how many threads per inch you want and that is going to indicate which lever selection you pick and which knob combination you pick as well I will make a quick note that the lathe comes with change gears and usually I haven't had to change these change gears yet but if you're going from inch to metric or for certain combinations you're going to want to look at the number of teeth for the gear and confirm that you've got the right gears set so that's one little note on this and from here we're going to move over to the spindle here we see the monster two inch through spindle capacity I will note that the lathe comes with a sleeve this is a spindle reducing sleeve that's Morse taper five-and-a-half on the outside push that in and then you can take a Morse taper three accessory and put that right into the spindle reducing sleeve so if we've got a faceplate and we want to turn between centers this is a very easy way that we can accomplish that when we're done we can slide a rod in from the other side and easily knock it out let's talk about the bed in ways real quick so the bed is super heavy its cast iron and it's got induction hardened in ground ways which are gonna last a long time there is a removable gap bed here you remove four bolts that comes out and that gives you twenty two and a quarter inches swing over the gap which is nice with it in place it's going to operate just as normal you're going to get the carriage right up close to the spindle we've got three rods here we've got the feed rod for threading we've got the feed rod for power feeds and then we've got the motor control rod alright so let's take a look at the carriage starting on top here we've got the coolant nozzle and the coolant nozzle valve this is going to follow the tooling we can easily position where we want the coolant to drop to you get that back out of the way no problem and then on the top of the carriage we have the cross slide and we have the compound slide these both have tapered gibs they're both precision ground on the top so we can use magnetic indicators on these they've got ball Oilers I use mobile Vectra number two and an oil and can like so you just depress the little ball bearing it's got a spring behind it and apply your oil very easy way to lubricate this particular machine since they have tapered gibs the compound and the cross slide are going to be tight you can get them just at the right level of precision where they're not going to bind but they're also not going to rattle which is going to enhance the precision of your machining there's also a carrots lock over here which I've fashioned a custom handle and allen key for I like this because I just rotate it a little bit less than 90 degrees to lock the carriage if we're facing or for parting that's going to be an important thing to do to preserve its positioning we've also got a threading dial which is great because that allows us to engage and disengage the half nuts so that we can take multiple with precision without having to keep those half nuts engaged let's look at the apron so on the apron we have the creek for carriage position we have the power feed control lever the half nut engagement lever and the motor control lever let's see how these work so if we go up that's going to run the spindle in Reverse middle is off and down is forward if we want longitudinal feed we pull the plunger out and pull it up if you want cross feed we push the plunger in and push it down on the headstock controls we can change the directions of these respective power feeds let's set our threading for 24 threads per inch we're going to need BC and then follow the 24 up we're going to need px let's make those adjustments so first with the knobs b c and then with the levers p helps to turn the spindle while you're doing this so the gears will mesh and then X this is going to be 24 threads per inch now when we turn on the lathe again we'll see that the feed rod for threading is turning and we can engage the half nuts aligned with one of these numbers you starting at the back of the tailstock we have two levers a lock for the quill and the clamp for the ways the tailstock has four inches of quill travel it's got an internal taper of Morse taper 3 it's got this flat top which is really nice when you want to run an indicator holder to monitor depth I use this for rifle barrel chambering all the time it's got a ball oiler for lubrication it's got inch and metric graduations on the collar for monitoring depth and it also has a lock this has a tang lock so that things like your drill track will not rotate when you're drilling very nice features really solidly put together all right let's talk court ruling in accessories before we go any further some of this was included with the lathe base package some of it was a part of the preferred package and some of these items I added you're going to check the web page for the PM 1440 GT it has the preferred package details and the base package details outlined there the lathe comes with the toolbox inside were things like this allen key set a combo metric 14 millimeter and 17 millimeter wrench and some of the other items shown here there is manual on CD the parts list and operator's manual print version and then we've got spindle accessories in chucks these are all d15 they direct mount to the spindle I've got the precision 8 inch 4 jaw Chuck this is available from precision Matthews separately really great for precision work and for rifle barrel chambering and machining precision three jaw check this is the auto strong this was a part of the preferred package when I bought the lathe this is a great piece of gear I've had Chuck's that couldn't hold five thousandths concentricity this has under a thousandth of an inch right around a thousandth of an inch very nice Chuck this is something I got separately from Pratt Bernhard Atlas this is the PB 23 quickie hand wheel 5c collet Chuck in my opinion one of the most important things to have for a is a 5c or other call it setup call its grip better they hold concentricity better and they're good for gripping delicate parts in delicate features like threaded sections where you want to turn down a shoulder on a different section of a round bar material okay and then we've got the face plate the face plate is great for turning between centers or for bolting down items that are asymmetrical and difficult to chuck in an actual chuck this was a part of the preferred package when I bought the lathe this is a custom tooling fixture that I made to turn down multiple sections to test for alignment between the tailstock and the headstock the lathe comes with a really nice follow arrest and a really nice steady rest these are cast iron they've got steel knobs they've got brass tips they're nicely epoxy painted like the lathe is it's very durable paint and then you know the follow rest is kind of built the same way with the same construction and features they're set screws to preserve those positions and they're just very good accessories to have in a like manner micrometer carriage stop this works with the feed rod clutch on the PM 1440 GT so that the carriage can basically hit this stop the feed rod clutch engages and you'll turn a shoulder or a feature to the same exact spot each time the carriage stops the lathe comes with a complete set of change gears for some of the different feed rates and the different threading options that you have I have not had to change these I built this custom rack out of Steel so that I can keep these gears easily organized and so that I can find the gear that I need when the need arises to use those the lathe comes with two dead centers one with a carbide tip and one without so you use the carbide tip on the side that would spin and then the high speed steel and a precision ground on the other side and the spindle side these are the boxes that those dead centers came in the lathe comes with a turret style tool post I opted to upgrade to an Elora scone quick change tool post which I'll show you later in the video and then we have the reducer sleeve for the spindle which I showed when I did an overview of the spindle Morse taper five-and-a-half on the outside Morse taper three on the inside this covers 90% of the scenarios and all the basic bases that you're going to need for precision work let's continue the tour so those are the basic parts of the lathe the next part of the tour is to do some machining okay let's go ahead and mount a chuck so that we can do some demo turning now I will note here I have a number one stamped on the spindle and a number one stamped on my Chuck these are alignment marks where I've confirmed the precision of the alignment of the Chuck so what I usually do is I give these a quick tighten all their around two three four five and six now I give them a final tightening all the way around one two three four five six and then I confirm yep we're really tight on the ones that have already been double tightened okay now we can mount some material I've got some aluminum tubing here that should be good for a demo just gonna chuck this up and we'll turn a bit of a shoulder around here so let's go with a feed rate of three point six thousandths per revolution we need bc we're already on bc here and our lever positions need to be IX we're already on x down here so we're going to move over to I and that should do so we'll just start the spindle get our tool into position crank her in a little bit and then engage the power feed take another pass take a finer cut okay let's do a power parting procedure [Music] variance [Music] okay let's do a heavier cut on some steel to test the rigidity of this lathe some larger diameter material it's just some steel round bar I had laying around okay and I'm gonna slow the spindle down just a little bit put a heavy carbide tool on there we call that zero let's take two hundred thousands how about that taking off almost a quarter of an inch here of material as you can see the lathe that's not slowing down even a bit okay after multiple passes there we're going to Creek the speed up a little bit take kind of a nice finishing pass here just going to go in a couple thousands of an inch get a nice fine cut why don't we face off the end there we've got kind of a rough finish going on that side okay so I'm gonna go ahead and change our speed once again change our feed direction we're gonna face from the inside out just take a very light cut there this I'm going to go ahead and clamp the carrots engage our power feed take one more pass clean that up a little bit [Applause] [Music] give that a little touch-up with a file to break the edge there okay let's do a quick threading demo I've got my levers to set for 24 threads per inch i rechecked and turned down to section on this aluminum tube that we've got we're gonna slow that down a little bit that should be good and what I like to do is I'll just get my tip touching and then I zero out the x-axis on the Dro this is going to be the point I'll always return to and then I'll in feed with the compound so let's give it about 5000 set a 29 degree angle and then we can go ahead and engage the half nuts on any of the tick marks based on this thread pitch okay so back zero out the DRO we're gonna infeed see another let's do seven this time wait for a - we'll go ahead and just repeat this process until we're at exactly the right thread depth and of course one of the things we'll do frequently on a lathe is drilling drilling and boring so that we can enlarge holes we can precisely align holes by removing any drilling in accuracy so it bring this tail stock in go ahead and do some drilling here and we know that's not going to be perfectly accurate so we can follow that up with the boring bar now you have a hole that is both the exact diameter that we want and is running perfectly concentric with their part all right now that we've done some quick machining demos let's do a few tests that's going to quantify the precision and alignment for this lathe the first step will establish the alignment precision for the headstock and that's to turn a cylinder we measure in two points we can see how precisely aligned the axis of the spindle is with the ways okay so to quantify the precision of our alignment we're going to zero out over here go about four inches down take another diameter reading and then we're at 310 thousandths of an inch over four inches that's a great result another really critical evaluation criteria is spindle run-out I've removed the truck and shifted the headstock garius inch in neutral and I've got a ten thousandth indicator here what we're gonna do is run this in until it's deflected on the inside of the taper and then we're gonna really slowly rotate the spindle observing and I see basically no needle movement there just a little bit of fluctuation most likely just due to the deflection of the needle from friction sliding sideways pretty much dead on this test will evaluate parallelism between the quilt in two ways I'm just going to bring this 10,002 indicator forward so that it just contacts the quill and then we'll run it along the quill for say a couple inches so there we are we're at a little bit beside zero there and we're within I'd say over two inches we're within about one ten thousandth of an inch that's a great result okay now we can check the alignment of the headstock and the tailstock in order to accomplish this there's a couple different kinds of tools you can use what I have here is a test rod being driven by a lathe dog the lathe dog is actually too small to go into the slots so I'm using these recessed holes here which is fine we just need something to to turn that the test bar I've got the reducing sleeve in the spindle I've got a Morse taper 3 dead center here and then I've got a Morse taper 3 dead center on the tailstock end I put a little oil on there and what we do is we turn the two sections while they're being turned between centers and if they're turn to the same diameter then we know that the tailstock is in good alignment with the headstock [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] okay so just like with our turning is cylinder test we're going to take two diameters one here make sure everything is perfectly square okay nine nine nine nine and over here nine nine nine eight five so basically within one ten thousandth of an inch amazing one of the things I've spent a lot of time on with this lathe and actually enjoyed quite a bit is getting everything organized just the way I want it and adding all the accessories and fine touches let me show you some of the stuff that I've done the first thing it was some trays and this tray is something that I made from angle iron sheet metal and some stair tread material and I attached it over the top of the headstock here now one of the things that I found was there was a little sort of depression on the top cast into the casting but I didn't quite have enough room for all the tools that I wanted to put on the lathe and I wanted to have a nice flat surface with this box around the edge to keep tooling from falling off the edge I've also got over here storage for keys this is the d15 key for these pin features and then my four jaw Chuck has another key and then this is for tightening and loosening the pinch clamp on the outboard Spyder let's go to the splash guard tool tray okay I absolutely love this splash guard tool tray it gives me room to put indicator holders all of the tool blocks for my quick change tool post parting blades boring bars turning tools all sorts of stuff set up and ready to go I've got a small container that I'm a while back with machining oil to brush onto parts why machining I can magnetically attached things like this mighty mag indicator holder for the tail stock I've got my oil up here Center drills and then I also made this rack over here this in my book is another essential it's just a wood strip with some cross holes drilled through mounted to the tray it's got Morse taper three holes drilled in it I made a custom spade bit at approximately Morse taper three taper I've got all of my frequently used Morse taper three accessories here die holder live Center floating reamer holder dead centers and this means that right next to the tailstock I could just grab a tool and put it in just the way it should be over just off the end of the lathe just below my panel I've got a complete 5c collet rack that I built for my Logan and I kept it this has got all the way from 1/16 to one in 1/16 by thirty seconds of an inch and it's also a handy decimal conversion chart just pop the collet out the top grab it put it into the collet check here's the Atlas 5c collet Chuck on the lathe it's very handy you just step on the brake that means you can quickly turn this wheel insert your material clamp it down and then you're off and running ready to do some machining [Music] very handy another custom addition I've put together for the lathe is I welded these t-handle wrenches there's three of them the first two are for the tool block adjustments you've got the tool block set screws you've got this post screw and what's nice about this is it works with this t-handle here which is a socket and I can get this allen key through and I can adjust the tightness of the nut without having the post back out because those posts do want to back out that is a super cool tool and then we've got the compound clamp nut extended t-handle wrench so I can go all the way down below this block and not have to fiddle around with the right angle allen key I can quickly make my compound adjustment get it back exactly where I wanted at 29 degrees usually clamp those down very quick and it's right up here on my headstock tray and this is where I organized all of the tooling this is just a rolling tool cart with a maple top from Home Depot nothing special but it's got ball bearing slides I've got pretty much all my cutting tools and some of the lathe accessories here I've got files right here next to the lathe where I need them for quick access and then down in the bottom there's these nice ball bearing deep drawers where I put all the heavy trucks and stuff like that very very handy I've even got a spot for the steady rest and the follower s everything is labeled just how it should be so there you have it the complete guided tour of my precision matthews PM 1440 GT metal lathe if you're in the market for precision metal lathe i hope this answered all of your questions if not please drop a comment what did you think of this lathe and accessories and all of the tooling that I put together please drop a comment and don't forget I've got fundamentals of lathe and fundamentals of mill we're going to start at the very beginning and work our way up through some really awesome advanced topics make sure you subscribed with notifications and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up until next time happy machining and happy metalworking [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: gavintoobe

Views: 311,596

Keywords: Making With Metal, GavinToobe, Ultimate Reloader, Metal Lathe, Milling Machine, Welding, Welder, Machining, Tapping, Die, Tap, Threading, Plasma Cutter, Turning, Precision Matthews, PM-1440GT, PM-1340GT, Grizzly, G0509G, G0824, Grizzly Gunsmith Lathe, PM-949TV, PM-949TS, Drill, Grinder, Air Compressor, Rotary Phase Converter, American Rotary, South Bend, Logan, Kearney and Trecker, Cincinnati, Monarch, Horizontal Milling Machine, Bridgeport Mill

Id: Ur8I8nPG0Ko

Length: 40min 9sec (2409 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2019