Denford Software & Machines

Hello all newbie from Western, Ky. in the US. I just purchased a Mirac from a tech. school to be picked up later this week and it looks like I'll have a ton of questions before I get it working correctly.
My first question......It's listed as almost 500lbs. It just doesn't look the heavy to me, but I haven't layed hands on yet. Can anyone tell me if it's that heavy or more of a 2 person lift?

Hello Newbie (you didn't post your name!)
The manuals above this section list the Mirac lathe at 705lbs so its a little heavier than you thought and could be a 4 man lift or even a forklift job.

Mike

I collected a Denford Orac and we did that as a 4 man lift, one on each corner, and it is listed at 140kg (310lbs) and while it wasn't heavy for any one person if anything had gone wrong such as slipping, mis-stepping or losing grip as the underside was oily it could have ended in tears. At the heavier weight mentioned for the Mirac get proper lifting gear in to do the job safely unless you have 4 worlds strongest man contestants handy. I recently helped a mate move a Colchester bantam lathe and the move vehicle, Ford transit, had a high floor so required the lathe removed from the base as my crane wouldn't have been able to hoist it high enough with the base attached and the lathe alone was around 300kg and fairly unwieldy but at least slung from the crane you were generally out of harms way. Better to be safe than sorry.

I saw the weight mentioned in a couple spec sheets but they didn't specify shipping weight or just machine weight. The machine could easily be half of shipped weight so I wasn't sure.

I talked to the instructor of the tech school where the lathe was used and he said 4 students moved it out of storage for the sale ad pictures and would be available to load in my truck.

Once I get it home I have a tractor with a front end loader and forks so it shouldn't be hard to move around.

Thanks to all who took time out to reply.

Hello!!

Do you know if the Tech School has more to sell?

Thanks

Iron-Man

No, their auction ended a few days ago.

Another noobie question... The control box lists power as 240v but the mains plug looks like it's 110v and plugged into something. Do I just replace the plug? Is it actually 110v or 220v? Did this lathe use a transformer?

Next, is there any software that has a free version so I could check the spindle and axis drives?

It came with a tutor keyboard. Is this of any use with windows?

It doesn't have a turret, but that's something I think I would want. Do they come up for sale very often? Is it a problem to add when it wasn't a factory option? Has anyone refitted one from a different brand lathe?

I've also attached the info tag from the control box. From this could anyone tell me anything about the software that came with it?

Is there a hardware limit for the software, IE will the latest version of turning software work with this machine's drivers? Since I'll have to buy a PC for this anyway I'm trying to decide which version of Windows would be best.