Buying lathe

This has to be a troll. Nobody would want the worst lathe compared to the next worst lathe. Maybe you could find an Indian or Pakistani lathe to throw into the comparison. Leigh at MarMachine

I am 80 or 90% happy with what I get from Enco and 10 or 20% happy with HF. My theory is that parts are made all over China for lathes and sold as commodities. Enco and Jet buy the good parts and Grizzly and HF pick up the left overs.

How would these compare to my 10EE with taper attachment, adjust true buck 3 jaw, reversible three jaw, four jaw, and 2J collet holders at $3500? Or my Mazak 16" x 72" CNC lathe with rebuilt CNC control at $7000?

Trollin', Trollin', Trollin'

Karl

I assure you I'm not trolling. I will have a certain limited amount of money left after building my shop and I want to get the best buy I can find on a lathe and a milling machine. A good used one would be fine but so far I haven't been too impressed with what I've seen on e-bay and I am new to this area (western Arkansas) so I don't know of any used/new machine dealers. So you say the enco lathe is worse than Grizzly or Jet? Some specific constructive suggestions would be a lot more helpful than generalized negatives. Thanks in advance for constructive input.

Or you can buy a used lathe, often of outstanding quality which dwarfs that of catalog stuff. You can find them very well set up, at varying prices. For example, I'll be looking at a Harrison 13x40 (not m300, unfortuanately), w/ snap handle collet closer, 3,4 jaw chucks, an interesting hydraulic cutoff attachment, cupla other things, for under $3000. There is *absolutely no comparison* between this and enco/HF. My buddy got a real nice 13x40 Clausing Colchester snap handle for $2500. Damn..... Ebay had what looked like a beaut of a 15" C-C "round head", with a snap handle, chucks, for $5K. I recently saw a rebuilt 15" Monarch w/ 6' bed for $5K. Large machines, tho, for a non-commerical shop. There's a guy in Mass who has a nicely set up Logan, dirt cheap iffin you can get it out of his cellar!

Having said all this, I'll also be looking at a used enco (!!!) w/ digitial readout, snap handle collet closer, etc., for much much less, and since I really like and trust the guy who has it, I'll probably take it, if for nothing else as a spare or a stopgap while I keep looking.

Sometimes new Kia's are a much wiser purchase than used Rolls Royces. Hindsight is always 20/20, foresight is myopic w/o experience. Keep asking, looking, learning before you commit.

constructive input: Do NOT buy either of these lathes. Buy a good used lathe. Measure the bed to make sure it is flat, make sure it does the speed and swing you need[many old lathes are slow, and don't go backwards]

all of that stuff is junk.

Vulcan wrote:

The others are right, but, apropos of my other post, and you being in oshkosh, you may not have any other choice. I hear people talk about getting parts from enco, and are reasonably satisfied. I would tend to steer clear of HF, unless you are governed by price. And even then it might be serviceable. Actually, when one is buying low end, sometimes it makes sense to go by price! But not with 5C collets, as a counter example. The one's from china ($6) are unusable; the one's from poland ($13) are quite OK. Royal and Hardinge, well, whose got those bucks??

Also, when trying to evaluate stuff you can't actually use, it's easy to get distracted by bells and whistles, as opposed to important stuff. But the important stuff, like "usability" and reliability and gear quality are very hard to assess before hand.

Buying used is somewhat of a crap shoot as well. You might try machine shops themselves. Not infrequently they are getting rid of the old to bring in the new. A shop owner I know was selling a kick-ass fully tooled *heavy* Breda lathe (not well known, but one effing workhorse), for $500, in very good well maintained condition (cuz dat's how he ran his shop). W/ a spin collet closer! Local shipping woulda been more than the lathe!

Also, try your local pennysaver/classifieds. What I did was to hang a Lathe Wanted sign in my local machine shop supply house's vestibule, and got a cupla calls.

Still don't have a lathe!!!! But I use my buddy's Colchester, so I'm not totally strapped. Hopefully by this weekend I'll have my own. Mebbe an enco!! w/ digital readout! Which means, if you get an enco, we can commiserate w/ each other!

I hope my buddies talk to me, after they find out!

You have the best chance of getting a good import lathe in your price range with Jet. Their customer support is good and their parts stock is extensive. Second place goes to Grizzly or maybe Enco if you must. They both are cheaper than Jet, but there is a reason. I would not consider HF under any circumstances.

Randy

Constructive, BULLSHIT! The advice you give has been hackneyed to hell and back, and with the supply of good, older lathes getting between slim and none, maybe you should spend the time to find a good used one for him, for the same price as you get for your advice.

To turn your bullshit around and pack it where it should go, between your ears, my Grizzly 12 inch is now over ten years old and still holds just about any tolerance I want quite easily. Right up front, the difference between my lathe and any other import that you say you can't work with is the man standing in front of the machine. If you can't make one of the better imports work, you couldn't hold ten thousandths with a new Hardinge.

And I'm sorry, but I've had to rework a lot of junk that people tried to do on an "older, higher quality machine", and I've done it on my Grizzly. It was right when I got done, it was shit when they brought it to me. The only difference is the man standing in front of the machine. Period, no excuses, if you can't do good work with an import, nothing you produce will be good.

Greybeard

I disagree with that. I have a complete set of chineese made 5C collets that work well. I bought a this full set from enco for about 200. n my opinion a new set of chineese collets are better than a used set of US made collets.

I did a test of R8 collets once. I compared a Royal to a generic chineese import. I could barely see any difference in runout.

I own a jet mill drill and a jet band saw. I use to believe that Jet was a better quality import, but I really don't think so anymore. I also owned a Enco bench top knee mill(made it Taiwan) and it was by far better quality than the jet mill drill.

Uh, yeah, whatever you say. that is why all the professionals use all those grizzly lathes to make parts...NOT pinheads

hate having to spell things out that people should already know:

Mass: the bigger the better, with the exception of the need for spindle speed, the heavier the machine the better. Why? lack of vibration and stiffness. Lathes made in the last 25 years are lighter, sometimes through superior design, frequently through cheapness.

Feel: Even after you get all the friggin cosmoline off of it, you won't be able to FEEL anything through the handles. This is the difference between a part that works and a part that looks like someone cared about it. Take a chip with an older nonchrome bridgeport that isn't beat to snot, you can feel every flute on the end mill hit the part. FEEL. My Monarchs I can spin the handles on the compound and make the part look it was power fed. FEEL . I can sneak up to a number and tap the handle a few tenths at a time. FEEL. Tooling; Used lathes will frequently come tooled. instead of no name chucks the are likely to be buck or another name brand. Smaller things are cheap enough to buy.

Personally, if you don't need long turning and 12 swing is enough, buy a Monarch 10 EE, you will own it for the rest of your life. They are not all that easy to come by, I think it is because people are buried with them. They are that good.

On any used lathe, check the back, flat way with mics, it should be less than .001 form the tailstock end to just before the headstock end. The front trianglular way should not have any grooves. Other than that if it sounds good, it is good.

If someone can't appreciate a quality machine, don't take their advice. Just cause his limits are met in a chevette, doesn't mean you shoudn't buy a corvette.

You know, I can't help but think that whatever your point is, you might have better luck convincing others to adopt it if you didn't hurl personal insults while making it.

Why is it, I wonder, that this so often seems to come from people with "none" as their name.

Just watch out with those bargain used lathes- parts can be murderously expensive- there was a prior thread about a South Bend 9 x 20 lathe for which a simple tailstock ram was 330.00- more than the lathe sold for when new.

I sorry, did you read the post I was responding to?

....followed immediately by lengthy discourse to justify the price.

But that's right. A common gear that fails on an Atlas 10/12" costs $117 from Clausing today. Dimensions approx 1"x2", cast Zamak.

Bits of it, but all I'm saying is that your response loses credibility when you get abusive, regardless of who you're answering.

On the usenet that is how people talk to their mothers.