No harm, no foul....

[Reed Gray]

We had an accident at our last club meeting, and fortunately no one was hurt. The demonstrator was not familiar with the Nova DVR lathe. He had a piece of crotch wood mounted by pressing between the tailstock and chuck. When he turned the lathe on, the speed was way up, like well over 1,000 rpm. The piece almost flew off. He hit the kill switch and stopped it. He tightened it up again, and started it up again, and hit the ramp down switch. Since the speed change this way is so much slower than other variable speed lathes, this time the piece came off the lathe. If you are used to a DVR, no problem, but if not, the speed controls don't work like anything else out there. One of the things I don't really like about the lathe is how you change speeds. With a dial a speed, this wouldn't have been a problem.

I don't remember if I do this by habit or not, but think I do. I will make sure to do it every single time I turn now. If it is a lathe I have never turned on, I will turn it on with nothing mounted, and run through most of the speed range. Then, with the speed at zero, with a piece mounted, up the speed to comfortable range.

robo hippy

[Bob Bergstrom]

I did a similar stupid thing the first time I turned on a electronic controlled lathe. The guy who owns the lathe turns a lot of pens and had it running about 2,000 rpms. I had a 8" bowl blank on a screw chuck with no tailstock. The blank hit the basement joist and came back down behind the lathe. Close call and I was lucky it didn't bounce off my head. Great advice and thanks for the reminder.:o

[Alan Trout]

The thing with this is that the DVR shows exactly what the speed will be when you turn it on. so it is no mystery, all you have to do is look at the screen before you start the lathe. While this was an accident it was not the lathes fault. Most accidents are the user which I can attest as my stupidity is how I lost 1/2" of one finger and severed the nerve in the other on my jointer. The key with this is you should make yourself familiar with any new machine you are using. I do quite a few demos and the first thing I do when I get on a machine that I am not familiar with is I use all the basic functions before I ever mount anything on the lathe.

Alan

[Jim Sebring]

The Nova DVR powers up at 500 rpm. That default can't be reprogrammed, although the other four presets can be changed. The demonstrator, or someone else in the crowd, must have been using the lathe before the piece was mounted in the machine.

[Bob Hamilton]

Why did he start it up the second time without lowering the speed? It is not like it has to be running to change the speed, the way it does on a Reeves drive lathe. It wouldn't matter if it was a DVR or a dial type speed control if he was going to start it back up at the same speed.

I can't see any way to blame the lathe for that one.

Bob

[Steve Schlumpf]

Reed - I did pretty much the same thing the very first time I did a demo!

I didn't know the lathe and it had a reeves drive - which I had never used before. Course, I should have checked what speed it was set at before mounting the chunk of wood - but but the indicator showed it at it's slowest speed! Apparently - it wasn't! I now know how to clear an area around a lathe real fast! Thankfully - I shut the lathe down quickly before it had a chance to walk out the door! Come to find out after that - the reeves drive was stuck at around 1000 rpm and it took a number of us to work on it before we finally got it to slow down! Course - we removed the wood from the lathe before working on it - but it was exciting while it lasted!

Like you - lesson learned and I try and make it a habit to check each lathe - without a load - before turning on it!