Hapfo Ap-5000 M -semiautomatic

[Jared Greenberg]

Anyone have any experience with anything like this? I am currently using MiniMax's T124, but looking to upgrade.

http://www.copylathe.com/AP5000hydro.jpg

[Paul Engle]

Yea looks like a good spindle machine with some ornamental capabilities with the twin feed.having a lead screw is a good thing.

[Jared Greenberg]

Can you expand on the lead screw?

[Paul Engle]

On metal lathes the lead screw is timed to the main arbor / shaft the chuck is on, it is used for threading and self feeding all the " auto" turning that the lathe does. different gears in the lower box or shifts will give changeable feed rates per inch or .0001 's per inche of travel or revolutions as is commonly calculated. so many thousands of metal removed per thousands of inche per travel up or down the piece being worked on. so in a pattern makers lathe they have a lead screw or something timed to the main shaft that lets em auto advance/turn away material . most spindle / patteren lathes have a feature to follow a pattern or prototype piece, follower follows the pattern and moves the bit forward and in . like a bat starts out with the nob at the bottom but moves in to start the handle and then moves out again as the taper dictates with out human hand have to do nothing more than fix the blank in the machine , set the bit at start to the end of the blank, engage the power and then turn off at the end of the blank. Lead screws are great for prototypical work on wood you can engineer the piece as you make incremental cuts/ shape with perfect precision and are very smooth when fead very slow per revolution.manual cross feed tables can be used on wood lathes but very $ to make self feeding/ lead screw, small Harbor Freight lathes have lead screws take a look at their cat if you want to start out way cheaper than the one posted ,but only have one feed, the lathe you post has two ,in and out , up and back. not so much for bowls as compound like feed ( not really compound but just looks like it )is limited to up to 7 degress of taper on older lathes as the whole table moves at the angle not just the tool post. the newer computer driven ( CNC) ones with servos to move everthing are wayyyy cool as CAD program tells when servo to move and how much based on digital readout from sensors in the table these compare the demensions programed and adjust the tooling to mimic the measurements on the program for specific piece, I used one in shipyard to QC items from the shop , like machining backwards , like taking measurements after it was made to insure it was correctly machined / programed .... great for mass production but most ship yard stuff is one or two of a kind and end up working from a piece that was trashed ....( cept for BIG nuts and bolts )but was fun to program and run. Like your machine .... spendy .... way spendy unless you gonna make thousands of something.