hi all, i know that knowa days 600 quid isnt regarded as a lot of money, but bear in mind that once you've bought the lathe, your stuck with it! if your not happy with it then you have the hassle of trying to get rid of it, i think i would buy a tried and tested machine from the start, something like myford, colchester, harrison ect, you just have to browze through the forums to see what trouble and night mares some people have with their new imported machines, im not saying they are crap! im saying they sometimes have problems, just think to your self what one of the old timers in the industry would buy if they had 600 quid spare, they would buy a british/american/german machine something made from quality casts and such, a machine that actually works with a high degree of accuracy, you will pick up a lovelly colchester student/chipmaster or a exellent exampled clausing or harrison fully tooled for about the 600 quid mark if you look around, i should imagin most of the model engineering community have lathes that are pre war and in some cases pre wwI used with great accuracy, this alone tells one that its worth buying "old", i have read on a forum that a fella bought a brand new import imperial lathe only to find that the leadscrew was metric and the sc 3 jaw chuck had a run out of an egg, then he had problems with the electrics which he admitted that if he hadnt been competant with electrics and rewired for the uk he would have been killed, granted that this all happened a few years ago and the suppliers have got their acts together, "we hope" or so we've been led to beleave, im sure i learned my lessons from other peoples mistakes and keep well clear! well at least if you buy a myford there is always a helping hand somewere to be called upon even if you have to go to myford them selfs and there is loads of extra tooling to make/buy all the best for 2006 bill