shopping for lathe

[pcw]

monday i went to a store here in netherlands to go look for a lathe and maybe a mill. they sell chinese made machines for nice prices (HBM) the machines looked alright for the price they cost and i think lots of you use them too.

wednesday i talked to a guy who workes as machinist for years and he was giving me the "dont buy those crap things, buy old machine and overhaul them" and so on talk. to be honest, i would love having a weiler or schaublin lathe but they sell used for rediculous prices and may need some work to get them into tolerances again, wich will most likely cost more than a new chinese replica machine.
for my purposes, a chinese will do just fine as i see many beatifull engines seeing been made on the forum here on the chinese machines. actualy, i admire the pieces of art made on those cheap machines more than a engine made on high end cnc machines. no offence to the cnc guys on here ;D

although i like good advise, and i do know that a older weiler, schaublin, bridgeport and more of them are way better than the cheap ones. why cant people see that some of us, like me only have small budget to buy tools have just as much fun as people with those expensive better machines? i rather spend money on a cheaper lathe and have some spare money to buy extra tools to go with it than blowing all on a machine and have nothing left to buy even some barstock to make parts from.
pascal

 

[///]

I have to agree.

The people that tell us these machines are rubbish are just being elitist.
If everyone could afford a top end machine, guess what? They would have one!

I don't really blame them for being so though...
If I was driving around in a Ferrari every day, I probably wouldn't much like to downgrade to a Ford.
In the end they will both get me to where I want to be, even if one is a bit slower with a little less style.

My chinese machines are a whole lot better than the ones I had before.....
Nothing.

 

[Groomengineering]

Things have really changed in the last dozen years or so. Back when I was outfitting my shop old iron was cheap and the Chinese stuff really was garbage. Now-days the quality of imports is way up and the price of older machines has gone stupid high.

TBH I still believe that the imports will never match the quality of the older machines, but I would never say 'buy old or go without'. There's been a lot of very nice work done on import machines, and if I were starting a shop now I'm sure I'd end up with import tooling and be just as happy as I am now.

Cheers

Jeff

 

[tattoomike68]

When our community college sold off their machines we got a 18" by 20 foot Axelson lathe for $1,800.

sure its 60 or 70 years old but is in great shape. Yea we stole it.

 

[pcw]

that would need one heck of a hacksaw to get that into a garage size workshop

i have been offered a older lathe, used in a technical school. it is a small schaublin, bout 20 years old. cost: 2000 euro. needs bit of work, few gears from autofeed is broken. no idea what that would cost me to repair but i bet that wont be that cheap. than bit of paint and other small stuff needed to overhaul the machine.

new chinese lathe in same size: 750 euro. small mill would be 950 euro he offered bit cheaper when both bought at same time. wich would leave 300 euro for extra tools for the machines. than i didnt even count the damaged gears on the schaublin.
and taking the new ones apart to clean them up and set them up properly, the schaublin would need that too, but that's part of the hobby too isnt it?
Pascal

 

[Mosey]

I hope you bought that Schaublin and fixed it up. Then you can sit by it and pet it like a girlfriend, admiring the beautiful hand crafted quality and precision. The love of the beauty of your machine may help you make fine parts with it.

 

[pcw]

like said, the schaublin has some broken gears, 380v motor, so i would have to change the motor too since i only have 220v here. will end up being way over my budget, and than i still have a lathe with no extra's, just a lathe since all collets and tools for the lathe seem to be vanished. not even cutters to make any chips. i just dont have the budget for a oversized paper weight

 

[pete]

There's mutiple points of view about this, And maybe all of them are right for each persons situation. To do a proper rebuild means different things to different people. To me it means restoring the machine tool to new or better if possible accuracy and working standards. Your then looking at Regrinding, Scrapeing to perfection, Along with learning a very complicated and difficult skill that to be real good at takes years of practice and knowledge about what exactly to do, where and when. It also takes some very pricey tools to do it right. That all takes dedication and a huge amount of Time, Skill, and Money. Even finding replacement parts can take a huge amount of time, Or they just might be impossible to find. I spent over a year looking for a set of Atlas milling machine belt guards before I found them. I need further parts that I've yet to find.

Are those rebuilt machine tools far better than what you would normally buy at a hobby type cost? Of course they are. Is it cost effective for a hobby? Probably not, Other than the the added personal satisfaction. Or your real hobby IS rebuilding machine tools. If I ever, And I won't win the lottery. Then I'd just carefully select my used equipment and send them to a top rated rebuild shop. Call me when their done. I don't see that happening logicly.

Every year less and less high quality manual machine tools get built due to industry moving almost fully towards CNC. So from a hobby perspective our supply of good quality and in good shape machine tools is slowly drying up. Rebuild costs never go down. I won't live to see it, But it will happen that seeing someone with a high quality, high accuracy machine tool built by one of the top names in machine tools used for hobby machining will be a real rarity. And all of those machine tools are going to need to be rebuilt if there going to be used as a tool.

To answer what you should buy? I can't. Your really the only one that can come up with a answer that works for you.

I did buy a South Bend shaper and a Atlas horizontal mill, Both of them are over 50 years old and need rebuilding. These were never designed as top quality tools to begin with, But they do have something that can't really be put into words. Their "Better" than a Chinese machine tool, But I can't explain exactly why. Anybody that owns one will know what I mean.

Pete

 

[Florian]

like said, the schaublin has some broken gears, 380v motor, so i would have to change the motor too since i only have 220v here. will end up being way over my budget, and than i still have a lathe with no extra's, just a lathe since all collets and tools for the lathe seem to be vanished. not even cutters to make any chips. i just dont have the budget for a oversized paper weight

What schaublin is ist exactly? Some of the Parts are still available if that schaublin is not too old. (I do also have a Schaublin and one gear had to be replaced)

220V and a 380V Motor is actually not the problem, you can use a frequency inverter which converts the 220V to 3 phases and 380V. (There are frequency inverters with that ability!)

Finally i would try to get a better price; a good point is the broken gear... ("if i have to replace lots of gears it will cost me at least 500 but i only have 2000) somehow like that...
Perhaps they will come down with the price...

By the way; what accessories are with that schaublin? For that price, there should at least come a three-jaw chuck, drill chuck, live centre, fixed steady, change gears and maybe some collets (i would say so...).
If all those things come with this lathe, then it seems to be a good deal...

Cheers Florian

 

[mygrizzly1022]

Hi PCW
My advice to you is. Buy the lathe you can afford, that will do the job you think you want to do. Then don't think of it as a lathe! Think of it as tuition and course material for a Correspondence Course called, Introduction to the metal lathe.
If the Hobby Machining Bug seriously bites you and you become infected you are going to learn a lot from the infinite resource here on the internet and your lathe. As your skill as lathe hand improves the shortcomings of your equipment will become more apparent and you will learn the art of tuning and refining the lathe you have to achieve the accuracy you have become to expect from yourself.
In time you may outgrow your import lathe and want to move up the quality scale. By then you will have most of the necessary skills to recognise a Good old lathe when you see one, or you will be much better equipped skill wise, to bring an old clunker back to life. Then again....... you may find like many before you, once you have your little lathe tweaked and tuned you may not want to give it up.

Good luck..Bert.

 

[jct842]

I have a brother who calls the chinese machines junk. had I listened to him I would still be with out any lathe or mill. with my budget I could never afforded any thing. remembering to, parts for those "quality" machines cost more than an arm and a leg. a new chinese is ready to go..no parts needed, just a tear down cleaning and adjustment. tooling will have to be purchased no matter what you buy. a chinese is way better than nothing. john

 

[rake60]

My lathe is a Grizzly Model G4000 manufactured by Shanghai SIEG Machinery Co., Ltd
from Shanghai China.

It is the same lathe that is sold by Harbor Freight, Enco and Jet with different colors
of paint applied.

It was $750 new 4 years ago.
I could have bought a 40 year old South Bend flat belt 9 X 20 lathe at that time for the
same price. I spend most of my time at work looking for repair parts for machines that are
that old. I'm NOT doing that in my hobby shop!

My mini mill is a Cummins Model 7877 which is basically an X2, also manufactured by
Shanghai SIEG Machinery Co., Ltd
I won't even try to list all of the vendors selling the X2 as their own.

It needed to be upgraded from the very beginning.
It was still the best option available to me on my hobby budget.

The people who look down on the Chinese machines in favor of an old
machine have never bought and set up a new machine.
The only difference it the point of manufacture.

You would need to be very lucky to buy any machine and have it preform perfectly
out of the crate.

There is one difference.
When you buy a Chinese manufactured machine, it's yours to figure out and set up.

When you buy a machine from a domestic manufacture you have tech support available.

"Mr. Kerr, we have NEVER had a machine leave our plant with a problem like
this before".

Uhhhh Yeah.....

Rick

 

[Maryak]

Just a memory jog ;D

I'm old enough to remember the term "Jap Crap" and look at them now Some of the worlds most sought after and top quality products.

I would not be too surprised if in 20years time "Made in China" will be a sought after in the same way..................we all have to start somewhere.

Best Regards
Bob

 

[pcw]

quote: By the way; what accessories are with that schaublin? For that price, there should at least come a three-jaw chuck, drill chuck, live centre, fixed steady, change gears and maybe some collets (i would say so...).
If all those things come with this lathe, then it seems to be a good deal...

it has 3jaw chuck, live centre and thats it, rest of the items that go standard with the lathe seems to be used to replace parts broken by students on other lathes. i can get it for 1600 euro, isnt realy much but not worth it for me at the moment. it will blow my total budget just to get the machine going.