Emco Compact 5 lathe / mill

Vernon wrote: (...)

In descending order of importance:

1) You are a good dad. 2) Please consider asking your son to attend a machining class held at your local junior college. I attended and had a great time learning the safe and proper way to make things using machine tools. 3) You and your son will be very pleased to start out with a manual lathe and mill. If you pay attention, your tools will give you a 'gut level' feel for the variables that will result in the most productivity and best surface finish. 4) There is always time to move on to CNC after you have made some parts on the manual machines. Starting with CNC would cheat you of an intuitive grasp of the subject. 5) If you are patient, you will hear advice from other members of this group, most of which are much more qualified than me. Don't be distressed about apparent differences in opinion.

My $.000002

--Winston

Good choice for first machine. Do CNC later when he shows interest.

As said in the other response, if its possible to get him to a couple classes at a tech. college he'll learn a ton. Of course, telling a young man what he should do and having him listen is a truly rare event.

Karl

CNC is not really needed, Winston is right about learning on manual machines. CNC is great for long run/multiple parts. One part is faster on a manual. And you develop a worth while skill.

Hey Winston,

Super answer!! Wish we could all take the time to do that nice stuff.

I agree with what you say. CNC versus manual machines is the equivalent to doing thesis work in chemistry after the junior year. You still need to know the basics.

Now CAD-CAM, on the other hand, is a way to produce acceptable drawings without the draftsman's full skill-set. Makes life and learning easy.

To Vernon:

CNC is a "TOOL", and not a single self-related style. You cannot SUCCESSFULLY do any notable CNC machining until you understand the rest of the work being done.

The Emco line of machines is quite good. Good choice for first-timers too. While I personally have never owned nor operated the EMCO lathe/mill comb or any of the combo machines (except on a field-trip to Smithy) I have read many articles, both ways, on their usefulness in this usegroup, as everyone else here has too. The general consensus is that if a lathe/mill combo is what you can afford or all you have room for, go for it. But if a bit more money and a bit more room is available, then get the two as separate tools. There are quite affordable separate machines in the same size range as the EMCO -5, for close to the same dollars.

Take care.

Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

Thank you Winston, Karl and Brian. Your much appreciated advice is logical and re-assuring.

All the best.

Vernon

I recently bought the CNC version of this machine. Same lathe, except it has the steppers in place of handwheels. The milling attachment is the same, no CNC milling control. This is a very fine precision lathe. It works best for brass, aluminum, and plastic. It can be used for steel, but don't push it. The milling setup is pretty light duty. Mine does not have a fine feed, but yours may. If it was all I had for milling, I'd sell it ($500 on ebay) and buy a Chinese minimill. One good alternative I saw was divorcing the mill column from the lathe and attaching it to it's own X-Y table. But yes, if you can buy it right, it's a great starter lathe for a kid of any age.

Be sure it comes with all the tooling, because each piece is expensive. Typical factory tooling usually included:

3-jaw chuck collet chuck for lathe ER25 collet set Indexer tool-post, preferably quick-change (2 styles) Milling table (slotted plated about 5"x6") Milling clamps Milling vise

I can send you pics of most of those if you need them.

Thank you, sir.

I love CAD! (Yay Rhino!

An intro drafting course would be a great idea. If none are available, careful attention to competent drawings will reveal hints on how to represent an item clearly and how to dimension it properly.

Hint: 1) Let your drawing 'cool' over night. Look at it the next morning from the perspective of the machinist who has to make the part. 2) Chuckle sheepishly at the specification or dimension that you forgot. (This works for me!)

Plus, while your son is hogging out the crankcase on the mill, you can be turning the cylinders and pistons on the lathe.

:)

--Winston

Brian Lawson wrote: But if a bit more money and a bit more

Missed this the first time. I don't know what the price point on this Emco is, or if there are other considerations. But in my observation, Emco machines, though finely built, are priced out of proportion to their utility. And accessories are machine-specific, expensive, and scarce.

I'd suggest (Shields up!) a new Seig Minilathe from any of the usual suspects. Once he has the hang of that, get him the minimill next year.

Support is limitless, accessories cheap, tooling standardized.

And you can add CNC to it later (DIY).

O.K. The color can give some clues as to vintage. The older ones are International orange, and the newer ones are bright red within those which were made as CNC machines.

Anyone *should* learn on a manual machine prior to every trying to program a CNC machine -- just to have a better feel for what the machine is capable of before asking the dumb robot to do things which the machine can't handle.

Note that there are versions of the same lathe which *are* CNC, both ones using a built-in (but limited) CPU, and ones which are driven from a PC (which was a bit faster at the time). One advantage of starting with the manual Compact-5 and then moving to a CNC version of the same machine is that a certain percentage of the tooling will work with both machines.

There was also a "F1" CNC mill with the same vintage of controller CPU as the Compact-5/CNC lathe.

I've got the Compact-5/CNC lathe (but not the "F1 mill"), and I use it for some things, and my older, larger Clausing manual lathe for other things -- so it is good to have both around.

Then he should enjoy the manual Compact-5 and learn well from it.

Send him here for extra guidance.

Enjoy, DoN.

--------

--------- see

Emcos are nice machines but the smaller manual machines are long out of production and the parts/accessories are not cheap. one US source is One of Blueridge's product lines is Shop Fox, which seems to be very close to the Emco design.

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

As the other comments suggest, anyone approaching small scale machining should become familiar with manual machine operation first.

There are good write-ups of EMCO combo machines in the archives of this newsgroup, and several other locations such as the Chaski 3in1 forum, and the CNC Zone forum.

The capabilities of the EMCO combo machine will most likely enable a user to fabricate nearly all of the mechanical parts required to convert the machine to CNC. Locating the electrical and electronic assemblies shouldn't be difficult.

The amount of information available for converting any common machine to CNC is very vast.

WB ......... metalworking projects

By way of follow-up to everybody. I was the successful bidder for the Emco Compact 5 lathe / mill. However, bidding was stiff and I was the only guy too dumb and hard headed to give up. I don't even know if it's complete with all the standard essential accessories. I will travel to pick it up early next week and will report back.

I genuinely appreciate each and every one of you for sharing not only your knowledge, but your enthusiasm.

Regards,

Vernon

Excellent news, Vernon.

As DoN said, you and your son are more than welcome to pop in and share your questions and comments with the group.

Best regards

--Winston

Thanks, Winston. I also bought an old bench mill last week. I thought it was single phase but noooo. It's 3 phase. So now we're looking into building or buying a phase converter. Also, your collective wisdom about taking a machining course was well taken. Next January my wife and I, and possibly both our sons, will enroll in a junior college course on basic manual machining.

But until we get smart we hope to rely on yall with our dumb questions.

Regards,

Vernon

Hey RB,

Whether I bought it "right" remains to be seen. I ended up paying about what an equivalent lathe / mini mill would cost new at Harbor Freight. However, I don't know what condition it's in. And I don't know if it has any - never mind all - of the accessories you list above. Somebody wanted it almost as much as I did. I can only hope he did his homework better than I did.

Regards, Vernon

On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:58:06 -0700 (PDT), the infamous Vernon scrawled the following:

Vernon, condolences on your successful auction bidding. ;(

Next time, figure out what you'd pay as a maximum bid, then use sniping software to enter that bid at the absolute last second. It'll keep you out of the bidding wars which make sellers ecstatic and buyers remorseful.

And now, at least you're aware of "homework", eh?

I hope the Emco purchase is chock full of goodies for you.

-- The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

--------- Everything considered, the low price and added flexibility of a VFD [speed control] makes this option very attractive. You can get units with either 110 or 220 single phase in and 3 phase 220 out.

I got my L100 Hitachi from:

Seem to be good people to do business with.

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

[ ... ]

If this was eBay -- now that it is won, could you post the URL (or preferably auction number) for the auction so we can take a look at it? I could at least tell you something of what might be missing -- or what you might want to look for. My experience is more with the CNC version, but I've learned about a lot of the accessories in picking up more things for my CNC lathe.

Not as sure of the Mill adaptor -- though I have one of the mill heads on a separate X-Y base to make it a standalone mill. (The column mounting bracket has the wrong screw pattern to fit the holes on the back of the lathe bed, so I have never used it under CNC control.

Best of luck, DoN.