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Why Did I Buy the TBI Lathe

3/30/2016

Well, it was for sale as-is. I was told that I could move the axes around and turn the spindle on. I moved Z back and forth a few inches, and then moved X up and down a few inches before I got a bunch of alarms. I backed the X axis away from the overtravel position and hoped that would clear the alarm, but it didn't. I was unable to clear the alarm and had to buy the lathe. Fortunately, I bought it for near scrap metal price. It also came with two pneumatic collet closers and a air-chuck, as well as about 10 Hardinge 215 collets.

At that point I was pretty worried about how this project was going to play out. I had hoped to use the lathe a little bit in its original configuration before going for a LinuxCNC retrofit, but I guess that just wasn't in the cards. I read the Fanuc manual and tried everything but was unable to clear the alarm and get the machine going.

I decided to have a look at the servo that was giving me grief and this is what I found.

So here I was with 6000lbs of worthless steel and I had to make a decision as to whether or not to invest a significant amount of time and money in a retrofit or scrap the project. After a few days of deliberating I decided to start ordering parts.

Bought a Lathe

3/20/2016

I've been wanting a CNC lathe for some time. It might be said that I have a lathe obsession. I've already got a Hardinge Chucker which is a damn fine machine.

My chucker is a turret lathe that was built in the 70's. It could be said that it's about the last top-of-the-line non-CNC lathes ever built. Pretty quickly after the 70's CNC lathes took over and the need for chuckers went away. It's a fantastic lathe and mine happens to be in incredible condition. It has an 8 station turret and using it I'm able to make parts with amazing accuracy and great speed. My only complaints with it are that it uses 5C collets which don't have much in the way of capacity so you can't turn stock over about an inch. I do have a three jaw scroll chuck for it but I'm still limited by the spindle through hole. The next "problem" is that I never got the threading attachment for it because they're hard to come by, somewhat expensive, and you need a different threading die for every thread pitch you want to cut.

I got it in my mind that I'd add servos to it and make it CNC, but the more I looked into it the more lost interest. My Chucker is in impeccable condition and I decided that I'd hate to screw up what is an amazing piece of good old American machinery; I started looking elsewhere.

What I found was a Tomlinson Brothers Inc (TBI) lathe. It's an eight station turret lathe like my Hardinge Chucker but it uses 215 collets which can fit 1.75" stock. The through hole is about 2.0" so I can put some fairly large stuff through it. It's also CNC.

This is what it looked like when I bought it.

Why Did I Buy the TBI Lathe

I decided to have a look at the servo that was giving me grief and this is what I found.

Bought a Lathe

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