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Hardinge HLV-H, Value Opinion

TravisR100

Cast Iron
Joined
Aug 7, 2006
Location
Houston, TX
I'm looking at bidding on a Hardinge HLV-H lathe. It's a closed bid and I'm wondering what an appropriate bid might be. Unfortunately it appears that the spindle motor is a 440v motor. Coolant pump is dual wound. Pictures seem to always show more rust than there actually appears to be on the machine. Machine not under power. Everything seemed to turn very smoothly. Not sure if it's in my profile but I'm in Texas.
 
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External appearance is good, nice clean electricals, full set of collets, QC toolpost and holders. The 460 volt motor could be an issue if in fact it is truly single voltage. It may be a dual voltage but marked as single voltage. The wiring would have to be examined. How tight are the bed a cross slide dovetails. Did you check the carriage at the chuck and the tailstock for looseness? Same for the cross slide and compound. Spindle feel OK?

Just from the external appearance it does not look to have been rode hard and put away wet.

A peek at ebay sold listing for same design lathe was $4000-8000 and that was only a few machines, not enough to judge the market.

Not under power would be a problem. Issues the lathe could have are spindle bearing ($1000 to $4000), a different motor, a rewound motor or a 3 phase transformer. Note I didn't say VFD because of the voltage. Drive belts and/or bearings for the transfer shaft.

The market in the Houston area. How badly you want a Hardinge.

Check with user alskdjfhg. He's in the Houston area. There are others but I don't recall their names.

I would say $6500 to $7000 would be reasonable.

Tom
 
Dual winding motor, not consequent pole, or is it a single speed retrofit?
I've not seen HLVHs with 1.5 hp motors, did they up the power on those in
later years?
 
I have seen other HLV-H's in much worse shape for $6500-$8000. After a rebuild the same lathe would list for $18,000 or more.

It's clean with some surface rust. If you bid a little higher than reasonable you might win. Why?

- Taper attachment
- Full set of round collets.
- Square collets.
- Octal collets.
- Step chucks.
- Band saw blade?
 
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How tight are the bed a cross slide dovetails. Did you check the carriage at the chuck and the tailstock for looseness? Same for the cross slide and compound. Spindle feel OK?


Not under power would be a problem. Issues the lathe could have are spindle bearing ($1000 to $4000), a different motor, a rewound motor or a 3 phase transformer. Note I didn't say VFD because of the voltage. Drive belts and/or bearings for the transfer shaft.

Check with user alskdjfhg. He's in the Houston area. There are others but I don't recall their names.

I would say $6500 to $7000 would be reasonable.

Tom

I didn’t have a whole lot of time but did check the carriage and tail stock, crossfeed, compound, and spindle. All seemed very tight with no play and moved smoothly. I’ll see if I can find alskdjfhg.


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Dual winding motor, not consequent pole, or is it a single speed retrofit?
I've not seen HLVHs with 1.5 hp motors, did they up the power on those in
later years?

From what I’ve seen looking through these forum posts all of them had motors that were marked 1.5 hp. Supposedly they are dual speed and therefore not easy/cheap to replace with something else.


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It does look in good condition, paint and printed plates are original and in good condition (usually a very good sign), might be a bit of scoring on the bed (hard to tell from the photos if it's just grinding and/or grime), needs some wipers (and probably the carriage pulled off to clean abrasive particles stuck in the teflon). That's not ANY rust for Houston...good luck!

I have to agree, for Houston that’s NO rust!


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The secondary side (115v) is connected to the metal frame. As in every HLV or HLV-H I have seen.
The white wire drops doing and connects to the bolt below where the green wires are tied.

Once in here there was objection for doing that. :scratchchin:

I’m not by any means qualified on electrical but I assume they’re tying the neutral and ground together?

Would definitely be nice if it were under power and I’ll factor that in to my bid. The person at the location was going to call whomever they got the lathe from to try to get me some background and history.


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Well IMHO it looks a clean machine and does not outwardly show signs of abuse.

Price wise, can't answer as I'm in the UK and the same machine would be cheaper here.

I'd bid a little over as other have said, can't "really" go wrong with an HLV-H

John :typing:
 
Looks decent. Cleaned up and tuned up it might go for $15k+. Remember that a full set of Hardinge collets is over $1k. Are there any metric gears and banjo in the cabinet?

I didn’t notice any however I didn’t look very well either. My question is what it’s worth as it sits.


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It is worth 3k, as-is. Imo.
Because of not running, and no idea on potential big issues.
3-6k++ in potential costs re: bearings, ways, slides, etc.

1500-2000$ will put an industrial AC brushless servo on it, 5x better than it ever had.
Motor, belts, drive, everything.
3x the torque, 3-10x the acceleration, and auto crash prevention due to servo timeouts in about 1 ms, 0.001 secs.

It looks great ! and might be a 12-15k lathe with 100 hours of labour, cleanup, minor items, and some electrical stuff.
Bidding for that future target value, say 6-8k as-is, means You think and guess there are zero expensive issues at play.
This is quite unlikely.
Imho.

600$ c/would put a great VFD/motor on it, all-in, junking all old electrical. Parts only.
Fitting, more than that, much more.

Bearings on x,z, screw issues x/z, c(w)ould all cost 500$ or more, industrial, each. Parts, wholesale.
So would ways on cross-slide, saddle, z.
Any chipped gears.
Any gearbox issues at all. Lots of work-hours to learn, strip, assemble.
Clutch ? Bearings on feeds ? Wear ? Mounts on all 30+ parts above ?

Making any of the mounts, fits, parts, is not hard at all for any competent machinist.
But they all take time in hours.

If one is somewhat skilled and experienced in machine tools one can bring the lathe to excellent conditions, for not much cost in parts.
But this takes maybe 300 hours of work, imo, ime, if almost-all of the lathe works perfectly.
So if one has endless spare hours, a small outlay of cash can bring in a good theoretical contribution margin.

Say, pay 3k, sell 12k, 4 months later, after 5-600 hours work + 1900$ in parts.
This would be my guesstimate.

I didn’t notice any however I didn’t look very well either.
My question is what it’s worth as it sits.

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It is worth 3k, as-is. Imo.
Because of not running, and no idea on potential big issues.
3-6k++ in potential costs re: bearings, ways, slides, etc.

1500-2000$ will put an industrial AC brushless servo on it, 5x better than it ever had.
Motor, belts, drive, everything.
3x the torque, 3-10x the acceleration, and auto crash prevention due to servo timeouts in about 1 ms, 0.001 secs.

It looks great ! and might be a 12-15k lathe with 100 hours of labour, cleanup, minor items, and some electrical stuff.
Bidding for that future target value, say 6-8k as-is, means You think and guess there are zero expensive issues at play.
This is quite unlikely.
Imho.

600$ c/would put a great VFD/motor on it, all-in, junking all old electrical. Parts only.
Fitting, more than that, much more.

Bearings on x,z, screw issues x/z, c(w)ould all cost 500$ or more, industrial, each. Parts, wholesale.
So would ways on cross-slide, saddle, z.
Any chipped gears.
Any gearbox issues at all. Lots of work-hours to learn, strip, assemble.
Clutch ? Bearings on feeds ? Wear ? Mounts on all 30+ parts above ?

Making any of the mounts, fits, parts, is not hard at all for any competent machinist.
But they all take time in hours.

If one is somewhat skilled and experienced in machine tools one can bring the lathe to excellent conditions, for not much cost in parts.
But this takes maybe 300 hours of work, imo, ime, if almost-all of the lathe works perfectly.
So if one has endless spare hours, a small outlay of cash can bring in a good theoretical contribution margin.

Say, pay 3k, sell 12k, 4 months later, after 5-600 hours work + 1900$ in parts.
This would be my guesstimate.

Hanermo, thanks for your opinion. You mentioned both an AC servo and a VFD. I thought these motors were dual speed and therefore you’d lose the speed shifting if you replaced the motor. Not necessarily a bad thing but selling it later some might not like the fact that the original electronics were changed out. Me? I don’t so much care and would be happy to find one already done and ready to go with a servo or VFD. If I bought it I’d be buying it to use it not to resell. With that in mind I’d probably only rebuild and replace parts that i needed to in order to get it to function correctly.


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Mine has the original GE two-speed motor, unfortunately 440 V. I use the simple way of running it from 225 V single phase: rotary phase converter and three phase transformer. It works fine and the wiring is simple because nothing on the lathe has to be changed. I got the lathe in 1984 and was told then that the same motor in 220 V would cost me $1000. The transformer cost a lot less.

I have never figured out if the "HP 1-1/2" on the motor plate means it is 1.5 HP at both motor speeds or if it is 1.0 HP at the high speed and .5 HP at the low speed. I say that because all my other Hardinge machines with original motors have nameplates that say .75 HP at 1725 RPM and .375 HP at 825 RPM.

It is possible to use a VFD and 220 V motor in these lathes, and it has been done. A VFD and single speed motor (best with HP double the OEM motor and/or rated speed of 825 or 1150 RPM) eliminates the advantage of a two-speed motor. But the wiring becomes complex because the VFD can only run the main motor. The feed motor, speed changing motor, brake and coolant pump have to have their own power supply. The main motor control switches have to be re-wired to operate the low voltage controls on the VFD.

Larry
 
I respectfully disagree with hanermo's assessment. If that lathe looks as good in person as it does in the pictures, and I needed/wanted one, it is worth a better than average asking price. Good looking original paint and plates, nothing obviously knackered-up or abused looking (in fact the pics of the cross-slide also appear to have virtually no dings or dents), all parts appear to be there and undamaged, there are fresh unrusted chips on it so it was working recently, only a bit oily and grimy (probably a good thing, it's been lubricated), full set of fresh-looking collets, (also has a taper attachment, with the usually missing shoe), QC toolpost and holders (the collets, taper-attachment and toolpost are worth at least $1500 on fleabay).

So it looks clean, undamaged, consequently with likely light usage and not abused, so IMO there's probably a small risk of something not working or damaged. Also, the electricals look untampered with, and there's no advantage of replacing any motors, controls, VFD's etc and having to rewire, add, and lose the original controls and ergonomics (thousands of these lathes had been sold, and people seem to like the setup, this has been discussed at length on the forum, and the general consensus, as Larry alluded to, seems to be, that if the controls, motor etc have been hacked up, it's probably worth looking at, but otherwise not). The OEM motor is a specially balanced 2-speed behemoth. One comes to appreciate the simplicity and effectiveness of the mechanical design. If I were a betting person, I'd bet that machine when hooked up to proper 440v three phase, will run and operate with no issues (no "projects" required other than cleaning and general maintenance). I haven't bought hundreds of machines, but never understand the rather small premium people are willing to pay for a good-condition machine versus one that obviously is worn and/or requires work (usually lots of work). Can't see anything on that that obviously requires work or repair. Everything has some risk, but again if that looks good in person, that risk is probably low.

(Bought one in seemingly similar condition ((mid-80's E/M used in a corp toolroom and 230v, E/M), unpowered, and it required zero repairs other than way-wipers, and a screw for the collet-closer. Cleaned it up, removed the carriage and cleaned the teflon, crossslide, made sure the lube pump was working, lubed things, plugged it in and it's been working flawlessly since.)

I haven't studied asking prices, but IMO much more than $3K. Best of Luck!

Car2, appreciate your opinion as well. Actually the photos look worse than the machine itself. For whatever reason photos seem to bring out rust that the naked eye doesn’t see. All the parts that you’d expect to be lubricated definitely are.


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I didn’t notice any however I didn’t look very well either. My question is what it’s worth as it sits.


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$12,000 to $15,000 considering the accessories and the year. The machine is in nice condition.
The negative is the 440V motor. You will have to deal with that.
 








 
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