After I had decided to purchase one of the 1324 Granite 3-in-1 machines I called Smithy and they were very good to deal with. I wanted to pay cash for the machine but the purchase price was above the daily limit of my debit card. Smithy set it up to be paid over a 2 day period with no headaches. I was told that the machine would ship the day after the final payment was made which was no big deal. What I didn't think of was that the coming weekend was a holiday and so instead of shipping on Friday, the machine didn't ship until Tuesday and it went downhill from there. Instead of taking 5 days it took 2 weeks for the machine to arrive. Plus (and this is the only gripe I have to date about Smithy) the shipping company was to deliver the machine to a company shipping dock in the town that I live in and then I would pick it up from there. The problem was that the company didn't have a facility in my town. The closest company facility they had was over one hundred miles away and they didn't have a correct phone number to contact me about this. When they finally made contact with me I was out of town working and I made arrangements for the company to deliver it to the yard of another shipping company ,my wife then went to go pick the machine up. That cost extra and was a major pain. But everything arrived in good condition so I looked at it as better late than never.
The machine shipped in one crate, the stand shipped in another and there was a third box that had some extra stuff in it.
My plan was to use my engine hoist to lift the crates out of the bed of the truck. Which is what I did, I just had to modify the hoist to get some extra height out of the hoist. To get that height I welded a new jack mount above the original mount on the hoist.
The crate weighed 978 pounds and not trusting my welds 100% I left the C-Clamp on when I lifted the crate out of the truck bed.
Once off the truck I removed the crate and used the ratchet straps to get the machine ready to set on the stand. But first I had to put the stand together.
After getting the stand put together and positioning the stand I was ready to set the machine in place. The Granite has 5 lift handles around the base of the machine for lifting and it made it easy to use the ratchet straps to lift the machine in a level position. these handles slide out of the base so they aren't in the way once the machine is moved into position. I used 4 of the lifting handles.
After setting the machine on the stand the next task was to bolt it to the stand. I used 4 grade 8 bolts to take care of that and then broke out an old, very accurate machine level and spent an hour or so making sure I had it as level as I could get it.
After getting it leveled I needed to mount the power supply. I had seen pictures of some mounting locations away from the machine, which would be nice to help keep it clean but I placed the machine so that I have plenty of access all around the machine, so I had to mount it to the machine.
The standard mounting location is on the back side of the machine, to the right of the bed, below the head stock of the lathe. The supplied four screws take care of it.
After all of that I took some time going over the machine with the manual opened to make sure I knew where everything was located and then I made sure I lubricated the machine thoroughly, as the manual called for with a non-detergent 30w motor oil.
All machines are run in at Smithy, but the manual lays out a run in sequence that doesn't take too long to complete. After the required run in procedure was complete I got to thinking that it may be a good idea to make sure that the machine had been properly cleaned at assembly and I decided to remove the gibs on all of the ways and give them a good cleaning and make sure that the ways were burr free, as I had heard was the case with some people. I found them to be fairly clean and smooth but it was a good step to take. Kind of a cheap insurance and something that I should have done just to be sure before I had run the machine for the first time.
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