After being allowed to use a Hardinge HLV-H for a few awkward screwcutting jobs (e.g. small diameter inside threads in very hard material), going back to using an ordinary lathe for thread cutting seems a bit hard.
My workshop space doesn't run to a machine of this size and weight, so I've been looking for smaller precision lathes which can be used for screw cutting. Such a machine would inevitably be less rigid and thus less good at cutting threads in extra-hard materials than the Hardinge, but is there any well known outstanding example?
The usual precision small lathes (Schaublin 70, 102, Lorch, Boley) that I have used tend to be plain or have chase screwcutting, which is good for making optical compoments with short threads of a limited number of pitches, but doesn't meet my needs for a general purpose thread cutting lathe. I know schaublin thread cutting attachments exist which connected via universal joints to the end of the topslide feedscrew, but none of the machines I used had such an accessory, so I do not know what it is like to use.
The only quality small lathe I have seen with "traditional" screwcutting is the Lorch LAS, but I've never used one. Are there any other obvious options I have not thought about?
Alan