Make Your Own ER11 Spindle

[gregsolano]

One last comment on this issue. USPS priority is tracked and works well. Insurance costs extra but very little. About the only advantage UPS has is the insurance that is included up to $250 I believe. But It is a pain to file a claim and if you file a few claims they start inspecting your packages and treating you different. I ship hundreds of items USPS flat rate priority and have not had a single lost or late item, always delivered in three days. I have had a couple of damaged items and I ate the cost of those but two out of a hundred is not bad.

[ktjwilliams]

Bergerud,,,, Hope UR making progress,,, The Carvetight was on sale,,, So I priced it out with the bare minimum of things needed to be able to use the Carvetight... The Carvetight was $ 139.00,, with the bare minimum ie: carver and cutter bit, probe adapter, 1/4" adapter..... Totals $ 293.88.... Geezzzzz !!! I would rather spend the money on the DXF software and then the STL.... LOL !!!!

[bergerud]

I am working on it. There is no way around the lathe. I have now over three pages of instructions I am working on. I believe the best solution is going to be with the 5/8 shank ER11 collet chuck from Shars.com for $42.50. I have ordered one and was going to wait until I got it to release my instructions. I have to make sure it is what I think it is. If you want, I can send you my work in progress so you can better decide. I will try to PM it to you.

[ktjwilliams]

Or My E-Mail is KTJ.WILLIAMS@VERIZON.NET

As much as I would like to help LHR keep the lights on, I really can't C spending all that money on a CHUCK.... By the time UR finished with the machine and all the accesories, softwares and headaches,,,, U could have picked-up a regular CNC machine...

[henry1]

I am not in the shipping department, so I am hoping that I am making correct statements.

UPS 3rd day as first option was brought up again yesterday and will be addressed in the managers meeting next week. It evidently has something to do with the store software, but I hope we can find a way to resolve it.

Our regular shipping (currently $12) is actually UPS Regular Ground or USPS. It is up to the shipping department to decide which method it is shipped and I am not sure what criteria they use to make that decision. I believe most of the time they use the UPS Regular Ground, which means it is given a tracking number. This is peace of mind for the customer and insurance for us. Sometimes the old saying "the few ruin it for the many" is true and it unfortunately is here. I don't know if the USPS actually looses that much mail or not, but we re-send less parts through UPS when the package is tracked. We were trying one of USPS methods a while back (can't remember what it was called) and found that it could take several weeks to get delivered which didn't make any of our customers happy and we sent replacement parts, just to have the first delivered a day or two after we resent the item. So that didn't work and we stopped sending that way.

USPS Priority Flat Rate:
It is not tracked and goes up significantly when you move to the medium sized box almost $11, but for bits that can fit, it would be a savings, but again not tracked and not insured.

Well, I have found there are all kinds of different rates on USPS website, more info than I want to know and try to decipher on my day off (by the way, we are closed today for Good Friday). As I understand it from yesterday, shipping costs are on the agenda for next weeks meeting.

Your talking about a tracking # ,,the USPS also priorty mail will give a tracking # I deal with them always,, except when a bigger package I will go UPS ,,and USPS normaly I get it in 3 days
Henry

[Pratyeka]

I am working on it. There is no way around the lathe. I have now over three pages of instructions I am working on. I believe the best solution is going to be with the 5/8 shank ER11 collet chuck from Shars.com for $42.50. I have ordered one and was going to wait until I got it to release my instructions. I have to make sure it is what I think it is. If you want, I can send you my work in progress so you can better decide. I will try to PM it to you.

Just in case you might be interested by this, which happened some time ago before there were any alternatives to the old QC.
http://forum.carvewright.com/showthr...iminator-Chuck
I'm still running with this modification.

Your idea is very clever. I might just go for it myself when comes time to replace the bearings in mine.

[Frederick_P]

I truly want you guys to realize and appreciate how unconventionally lenient we are on this forum. Sometimes when I read things like "why should I buy from LHR?" I just want to scream "so we are still here next year!!".

Lynn, you know I am a fan and I truly do want LHR to succeed. But at the risk of beating a dead horse, how is the Canadian distribution thing coming along? There are thousands of potential buyers here that are eager to purchase your product but can't. I am pretty sure they would keep the lights on for a long time!

[lynnfrwd]

We still do not have a Canadian distributor. I'm not privy to or aware of any talks going on right now.

The roadblock is shipping of the machines. Parts are not an issue. We can do that.

[bergerud]

I remember the eliminator chuck and your old post Pratyeka. I modified an air grinder chuck and used that for 300 hours. The collets did not fit all sizes and were crude.

There is some interesting history here I think. LHR invents a wonderful machine but wants to use their previous QC invention (invented for routers) on the machine. The idea of quick change is good but the QC turns out to be a disaster. They are too slow to abandon it and users are left to fend for themselves. First there was the eliminator which was not adopted by many because it required machining. It appears to me that the Rock chuck was then a copy of the eliminator. The success of the Rock chuck finally forced LHR to abandon the QC. Instead, however, of going back to the drawing board, they copied the Rock! (I was shocked) I do not know how much of a shake up the ER spindle will cause, probably not much because, as with the eliminator, machine work is required.

If someone takes on the "rjustice" roll of producing ER spindles, maybe the Carvewright D will have an ER type system with a lock button on the truck. Then, I think, the story might end.

[bergerud]

I live in Canada. I bought the first machine on Vancouver Island through House of Tools. I introduced them to it and they brought them in form the east. They later abandoned Canada in the economic hard times and I was left to fend for myself. LHR would not ship to Canada in the beginning (or even respect warranty if I remember). I had to make my own parts! Busy Bee carried Carvewright for awhile but then they quit. KMS Tools was thinking of taking over but I guess they decided not to. Something must be scaring these distributors. I do not know how big the Canadian market could be, but there are many woodworkers up here who know nothing of the machine.