Hardinge HLV-H Conversion
I have been wanting to do a CNC lathe conversion for a long time. I have not converted my Jet 13X40 because I still use it manual a lot and I don't want to retract from its ease of manual use.
I have an opportunity to get a Hardinge HLV-H at a very good price and I am thinking of converting it to a gang tool CNC lathe by taking off the existing cross slide and putting on a long slide for gang tooling with linear rails and a ball screw. The lathe already has a collet closer that would be easy to mount an air cylinder for auto closing and I could add a bar puller. I would either put an encoder on the spindle and use a VFD on the motor or maybe even replace the motor with a big servo so I could add live tooling and index the head.
I think this would make a very nice CNC since it is a very precision spindle, has the collet closer, is already set up for flood coolant, and it is just the right size for what I need. I am a bit hesitant though about taking a very nice precision manual lathe and removing a lot of great manual features though. A Tormach Slant Pro would suit me fine if I could sell the Hardinge for enough to get one. I see the Hardinge lathes listed for sale for a lot of money, but I don't know that any sell at that price.
Opinions?
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Re: Hardinge HLV-H Conversion
I would convert the Jet. You can keep all of the manual functions intact and add CNC to it. I guess you could do the same thing to a HLV-H, keeping all of the manual functionality. It doesn't have to be either or, it can be both with nearly instant change over. I was going to do that to my 13x40 Jet before I bought my slant bed CNC.
Jim Dawson
Sandy, Oregon, USA
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