gonna buy a lathe

[badgeredd]

skimmerhead,

Since you've said that you've been wanting for a while and have now decided to take the plunge, I'd say that patience is a virtue that can pay off. I have wanted a decent used lathe for several years and have checked sale papers, want adds, on0line sights and so forth. Recently I came across a Logan lathe, a 12-36, and I was forced into purchasing it for the huge sum of $500 with a 3 jaw and a 4 jaw chuck, several tool holders 2 live centers and a host of trinkets that just make life easier. My point is, if you are diligent and ask around, visit area tool shops and machine shops you may well come across a deal that will allow you to spend a small portion of the 5k and give you some extra cash to upgrade or add a second machine to your stable.

Edd

[PatMarlin]

No kiddin' about buying and old lathe on eBay Chris.

It's getting harder and harder to find good American Iron, specially the smaller sized lathes as all those in good shape have been snapped up, or command a premium. Hope an imported mfg
becomes a clear leader someday. I would like to own a new lathe.

I was very fortunate as all three of my lathes I bought through Craigs List and could inspect and pick up myself. In fact every one of my machines I have found on Craigs and was able to pick up.

The only thing about Jet- didn't they recently go with a Chinese line of lathes? I would check that out. I have a Taiwan WEBB knee mill and it is a very nice Bridgeport copy. Some folks think they are better than Bridgeport. I have no complaints.

[jmh54738]

As a retired journeyman tool and diemaker one thing that is learned with age is respect for the opinion of others. In the 1960s every machine tool was American made. In a die shop or a mold shop, a lathe finds very little use. In today's shops with wire and sinker EDMs, and vertical machining centers just about all machines are imports. Vertical mills, and surface grinders are imports also, however not Enco or Grizzley. In 2004, I saw my first ever Enco lathes in an industrial setting, machining the critical seat areas of safety relief valves for major petroleum refinerys and coal fired electric generating plants. The best lathe is the one that you have!! To my knowledge none of these plants have blown up because their parts were machined on an Enco. This safety valve repair facility, is a division of a Corporation with 14,000 employees in the USA, far from being small town farm repair shop. It does little good to cry and bellyache because these parts are not being machined on a lathe of higher repute. In emergencies I would fly to plants to repair safety valves, using the plants own machine tools. In about 1/3 of these plants, I was not allowed to actually operate their machines, but instructed and supervised the machining. Old plants have some old machines, even lathes with flat belts and cone pulleys. The newer plants have all imported machine tools. In 2006, I spent 7 days running a LeBlonde 48" sliding bed lathe that was made in the mid 1930. It had not been used for 10 years and many employees of that power plant in ND had never known what was under that tarp. It was the ONLY lathe that could do the job, and I am not critical of them for not having a nice new lathe. The only two problems that I have personally observed with Enco lathes are........1) abusive shifting will break the roll pins that hold the shifter fork on the sliding gear shaft 2) the compound rest is so low that the screw knob will interfer with the crosslide knob at angles near 90 to the axis of the lathe. I raised the compound with a 1/2" steel plate.

[skimmerhead]

skimmerhead,

Since you've said that you've been wanting for a while and have now decided to take the plunge, I'd say that patience is a virtue that can pay off. I have wanted a decent used lathe for several years and have checked sale papers, want adds, on0line sights and so forth. Recently I came across a Logan lathe, a 12-36, and I was forced into purchasing it for the huge sum of $500 with a 3 jaw and a 4 jaw chuck, several tool holders 2 live centers and a host of trinkets that just make life easier. My point is, if you are diligent and ask around, visit area tool shops and machine shops you may well come across a deal that will allow you to spend a small portion of the 5k and give you some extra cash to upgrade or add a second machine to your stable.

Edd

took the plunge! bought a new 20" bridgeport and a cnc mill, they are both turbo charged and fuel injected. they have dro's and gps tracking, i bought an operator also so i just have to watch. i also have some land for sale in Florida should anyone be interested, will make you a good deal! i'm not in a hurray, still looking.

skimmerhead

[jmh54738]

Skinnerhead, I love your sense of humor. You just sit back and read all of this bickering. The quest for a lathe is fun in itself.

[skimmerhead]

Skinnerhead, I love your sense of humor. You just sit back and read all of this bickering. The quest for a lathe is fun in itself.

to be honest i wish i'd never posted this. i never wanted to get anyone riled up. i did get some good advise and i thank all who cared enough to share your opions and knowledge on the subject. and i have read every post and weighed the info provided, i am sorry to have caused such heated debate as that was not my intention. i hope any ill i have caused is repairable. as my sense of humor i hope i offended no one. it was not meant to. but it is my nature to be humerous, i am known to be a storyteller and comic to all who know me. without humor life would be dull. a famos comic was on hbo one nite and at the end of his show he said these words ( don't take life too seriously, you'll never make it out alive ) George Carlin

skimmerhead

[Linstrum]

- - - - - - - The only thing about Jet- didn't they recently go with a Chinese line of lathes? I would check that out. - - - - - - - - - .

Hi, Pat, I haven't been on the showroom floor of a machine tool distributor for about a year, so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Jet has some Chinese made stuff now like almost everybody else does, too.


rl860

[jmh54738]

My next machine will be GPS guided, CNC is old technology. (joke) I personally stay away from CNC machines. The manufacturers only support them for about 7 years. When no more computer boards are available, you have to find an electronic expert who can hopefully repair a faulty board. Beyond that they are scrap iron. Many other machines have boards in them and are likewise vulnerable. Our shop has a 16 x 30 surface grinder, now operating with the last known circuit board available for its system. Then what??

[PatMarlin]

Skimmer Danny-

You're not getting anyone riled up. We all like this thread. Don't make me travel back there and pay you a visit MR... ....

[PatMarlin]

My next machine will be GPS guided, CNC is old technology. (joke) I personally stay away from CNC machines. The manufacturers only support them for about 7 years. When no more computer boards are available, you have to find an electronic expert who can hopefully repair a faulty board. Beyond that they are scrap iron. Many other machines have boards in them and are likewise vulnerable. Our shop has a 16 x 30 surface grinder, now operating with the last known circuit board available for its system. Then what??

I would only have CNC if you were going into business, but you want to start on manual lathes anyway. That would be to weird, starting out on CNC and not have any manual skills. But, I guess a whole generation has learned that way.

What you do with old CNC Iron is retrofit with a new control. My Hardinge CHNC was retrofitted with a Fagor control and Glenteck servo motors, then I converted it to run on single phase 120v with my off grid solar system. The machine had very little wear, and the retro was 6 years old with low hours on it. Like new. I lucked out.

But then I bought a Supermax YCM-40 3 axes CNC knee mill, a very nice machine, good condition- made in Taiwan, for peanuts- $1000 with the same Fagor control, same motors. More hours on it and the machine could not be powered up.

Since I know the control programming now and like it, it made sense to run the same computer control.

Well something in the control smoked as soon as I powered it up. Shut it right down obviously. Smelled like a smoked capacitor to me. This model Fagor control stopped being manufactured 3 years ago. It was based on 1992 technology, and sold for about $12,000 new.


SO I call Fagor and they wanted $2500 just for their level 1 repair and diagnosis and with no guarantees for a fix. They rebuild them for $6800. I sent the unit down to an old electronic tech friend of mine from the music business. He had the thing repaired in a few hours. Sure enough was a smoked cap on one of the circuit boards, so he replaced all the caps and put in a new backup battery and charged me $380 bucks.

Next all the lost machine parameters have to be reprogrammed which is not easy since the orginal list is gone. I will most likely will take the machine down south and have it done to the tune of $1500. Could figure it out myself, but it would take me weeks.

Under $3000 for this Cat-40 3 axes CNC mill in great working condition is a steal.

Moral of my long winded post is, you can make old equipment run if you want to go through all this work. Some old CNC electronics are pure dinosaurs and good for nothing but the bone pile, but some are serviceable.

[jmh54738]

I agree with you Pat, CNC is the only way to go and be in business and it is great to have a friend whose head is wired up for electronics. That is sure a sinking feeling to smoke a controler. My Fagor DRO cooked a cap. got it fixed and got a couple more years out of it. Replaced with a Newall C-80, about $2000, installed. I'm just more of a mechanical guy these days. I even like a crank on my pencil sharpener instead of a battery. Just to stay on thread, I think that we are suggesting a manual lathe for Skimmerhead, as if he doesn't already know that.

[skimmerhead]

Skimmer Danny-

You're not getting anyone riled up. We all like this thread. Don't make me travel back there and pay you a visit MR... ....

come on over! i'll get you to wrestle a gator, it'll give me some practice taking pictures, maybe i can learn how to post em.

[skimmerhead]

I would only have CNC if you were going into business, but you want to start on manual lathes anyway. That would be to weird, starting out on CNC and not have any manual skills. But, I guess a whole generation has learned that way.

What you do with old CNC Iron is retrofit with a new control. My Hardinge CHNC was retrofitted with a Fagor control and Glenteck servo motors, then I converted it to run on single phase 120v with my off grid solar system. The machine had very little wear, and the retro was 6 years old with low hours on it. Like new. I lucked out.

But then I bought a Supermax YCM-40 3 axes CNC knee mill, a very nice machine, good condition- made in Taiwan, for peanuts- $1000 with the same Fagor control, same motors. More hours on it and the machine could not be powered up.

Since I know the control programming now and like it, it made sense to run the same computer control.

Well something in the control smoked as soon as I powered it up. Shut it right down obviously. Smelled like a smoked capacitor to me. This model Fagor control stopped being manufactured 3 years ago. It was based on 1992 technology, and sold for about $12,000 new.


SO I call Fagor and they wanted $2500 just for their level 1 repair and diagnosis and with no guarantees for a fix. They rebuild them for $6800. I sent the unit down to an old electronic tech friend of mine from the music business. He had the thing repaired in a few hours. Sure enough was a smoked cap on one of the circuit boards, so he replaced all the caps and put in a new backup battery and charged me $380 bucks.

Next all the lost machine parameters have to be reprogrammed which is not easy since the orginal list is gone. I will most likely will take the machine down south and have it done to the tune of $1500. Could figure it out myself, but it would take me weeks.

Under $3000 for this Cat-40 3 axes CNC mill in great working condition is a steal.

Moral of my long winded post is, you can make old equipment run if you want to go through all this work. Some old CNC electronics are pure dinosaurs and good for nothing but the bone pile, but some are serviceable.

hey Pat! how do you spell cnc ? is it anything like 911? when my wife got sick i had to look it up in phone book!

[lathesmith]

Pat, I believe that the Jet stuff I have looked at recently was Chinese-made, but I could be wrong about that. Just because it comes from China doesn't mean that it's not capable of doing some good stuff with the right operator though....

The best lathe is the one that you have!!

Well-put jmh! It's OK to sit around dreaming about finding a once-in-a-lifetime-steal-of-a-deal, but if you want to get any actual work done you have to pull the trigger sometime.

lathesmith

[Buckshot]

............The Chinese are not idiots and can make good stuff. Heck a lot of what they're making THEIR stuff on is equipment imported INTO China. I was looking at some photo's maybe 2 years ago of that huge new dam they were (or are still) building and they had a BUNCH of Caterpiller machines there so they know what good stuff is.

What they make is dependent upon what the buyer wants. On a mill you want ABEC 7 bearings and a chromed quill in a honed bore? Can do. Want scrapped ways, can do that too. Want a 14x40 lathe to sell for $4,000? Sure thing, they'll just speed up the line and put another shift on in the bondo shop Once again there are Chinese machines and then there are REALLY Chinese machines About 5 years ago when I got my Logan lathe I spent umpteen hours on the HSM and Practical Machinist's BB's. I remember one post of a guy who'd just gotten a new import Chinese lathe. He was grousing about the seemingly general oddities, like handles retained by roll pins, plus covers/housings having gaps, corners just not square, etc.

A few days later in the same thread he was still doing general cleanup and found several of the hollow crossbed stiffeners were still packed full of casting sand! The machine had traversed the entire factory like that! Further inspection in similar suspicious places showed places where the bondo shop had bondo'd over sand on inside corners. The thread naturally had guys with similar experiences, even some with sand or even cast iron chips in the headstocks from when the spindle bore was machined. Also apparently common on some cheaper machines is porous castings.

In the same vein some years back I needed a sawzall, but not a DeWalt or SAWZALL sawzall, but for what I had to do a sawzall would be the tool. I went to Horror Fright and for $19.99 I bought one, and then some blades. I plugged it in and it seemed to run just fine. I don't recall now why I did, but I pulled the rubber protective sleeve forward to expose the aluminum transmission case. It's cover was held on by 3 phillips head screws. Removing the cover exposed a seeming pretty well made worm and pinion gear, but there was a bunch of aluminum swarf in the grease. It was all from those 3 self tapping screws used to hold the cover on. I smiled. I mean they can make it, box it with a spare set of brushes, ship it across the Pacific Ocean, haul the container to a warehouse, the put it in a store, and EVERYONE involved makes money, and they can still sell it for $20?

Then again I needed a hammer drill for no other reason then getting holes started in this red concrete around here that passes for dirt (Good ole Redlands clay!). I bought this from HF http://www.harborfreight.com/3-in-1-...mer-97743.html Lemme tell ya, if you need a hammer drill (actually it's a 3 in 1) for $79 this thing rocks! Probably the best thing I've ever bought at HF. So here's a big 'Attaboy' for the folks at the Happy Cherry Blossom People's Hammer Drill factory #27.

.....................Buckshot

[PatMarlin]

Yaw- I have some Harbor Freight stuff cuz that will not die. Boggles my mind really.

One that's unbelievable is the 12" compound miter cut off saw. The wood model. I bought one 4 years ago. Cut all the beams and lumber for my shop with it. Countless board feet of 1x. Replaced the brushes once- cost a dollar per set. I run Freud Diablo blades, and have only used 3.

Then I've cut all the aluminum for my ROCKDock™ with it. I mean 100's of feet of aluminum, and it still won't die. SO I bought another one. On sale with cupon. Now I see they went to a different model.

Then my latest Chinese head shaker- I started out with all Enco import 5C collets. The $8 ones. They have all worked well. I had one start to wear and slip so I bought a few Hardinge which are very good, and one Lyndex from Enco. Their top of their line I guess.

Well I find a problem and discover I had run out of about .004 on some male dies. I finally tracked it down to the Lyndex collet. Replaced it with a new $8 Enco import, and problem solved!

[PatMarlin]

Danny...

Lookie here:

http://shreveport.craigslist.org/tls/1983496515.html

You're not really gonna sick an alligator on me are you? ...

[PatMarlin]

Snoop says, "don't sic no Alligators on my Dad!" ...



...

[deltaenterprizes]

Danny...

Lookie here:

http://shreveport.craigslist.org/tls/1983496515.html

You're not really gonna sick an alligator on me are you? ...

That could be a great deal and the price may decrease if it all goes in one shot.

[skimmerhead]

Danny...

Lookie here:

http://shreveport.craigslist.org/tls/1983496515.html

You're not really gonna sick an alligator on me are you? ...

no i figured i'd sick you on the gator so i could take some photos. c'mon man wrestleing a gator is about the most fun you can have with all your clothes on! where you at there snoop! git that gator boy, sic em!!

skimmerhead