Thread: What would you do?

Would a (good) used Myford be an option? I think one would come in under $2k, probably stand and tools and all...

mate...red ones go faster....

I have no idea what you should do George ... I just wish I had your dilemma.

Good luck with it.

Originally Posted by Vernonv

I have no idea what you should do George ... I just wish I had your dilemma.

Good luck with it.

I have very annoying supervisor at work - can I trade them for your problem?

Give yourself a time limit to find a Myford Super 7. If you can't, buy new.

G'day.
To my mind, The red and the Green ones are too small.
I have a 41" between centre lathe and wouldn't part with it for all the tea in china.
Bigger is better.
No substitute for cubic inches.
3 phase Rulz.
Foot brake is handy
Spindle bore of 60mm is also very handy.
Cam loc chuck changes are great.
Onboard coolant tank and work light are handy as well.
Powered cross slide is good to have.

Spend it all on the lathe.
BUy used replacable tip tooling from Ebay at a 1/3 of the cost of new.

But only buy the good brand name tooling as the chinese stuff is crappola.

what about this little fella?

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Vintage-Myfor...QQcmdZViewItem

crappy stand.. but beautiful old lathe.

Hi all, I'm getting the feeling that an old Myford is better than new, if so, why?
I was thinking that new is just that, new motor new gears, new parts, warranty and virgin.
Oh and here are the other 2 lathes

A little research is a good thing.
Perhaps what you need to do is work out what you would like to do and work backwards from there. Tooling for your lathe will be important here. A rough guess here is that basic tooling needed could consume up to a third of purchase price.

I am looking at a lathe soon as well. I have to think about a live centre, a keyless (tailstock ) chuck, a 4 jaw chuck and a knurling tool as essentials.bases upon the red one you showed - it looks like a Seig type C3 model with direct variable drive motor - theres an extra $300 to $400 on top of the $1100 purchase price (Mine is a smaller lathe ).

While Myffords are a fine lathe the negatives are that they are in demand (they attract fairly big dollars) and the crappy spindle size 9/16. The one displayed did not appear to have a quick change gearbox". A quick change box is a big Plus, believe me.Some of the tooling is hard to get and gets big dollars also. Google up the UK lathes site for more info.There is a link to it in an earlier post.
Grahame

For that money I'd make sure you get power cross feed, and quick change gear box. Ozmestore on Ebay have something similar to the AL330A about $500 cheaper.

I'm going through the same agonising decision at the moment and am tending towards the AL300 because of the better range of speeds and the quieter belt drive, but I haven't had the opportunity to look at one so am not quite sure. I'd love to hear from someone who has one.

Everyone seems to love the Myfords, but in reality you could probably pick up a good old Monarch lathe weighing in at about 2 tonnes for the same price. They are certainly quality machines, but I wonder if there is a bit of hype involved because they feature prominantly throughout the model engineering crowd?

My lathe at the moment has variable speed which is really great, but lacks grunt, has trouble cutting threads greater than 2mm pitch, and facing is a chore without power cross-feed. If you put on a 3 phase motor with a variable inverter drive you could add variable speed to the geared lathes.

Trevor's right about the footbrake being handy, but the AL330A might have the stop/go lever right there at the carriage (looks like the AL300 does) which is OK as well. Seems that whenever I need to turn the lathe off in a hurry, something is going horribly wrong and I panic and forget where the off switch is .

The AL330A is a pretty big machine ... will take up a fair bit of workshop room, but the one I played with was very rigid and very smooth.

George,

I'd revise my timing

H&F have just had their yearly sale, with some discounts on lathes.

OTOH, they usually discount the price on the machines they used in their demos, so maybe it's worth a visit to their showroom.

2 separate salesmen have told me that the catalogue price is for buying from the catalogue - but if you turn up in person they'll nearly always do better.

In person you can also ask about any 2nd hand lathes they have in stock.

I bought my Dad the baby C3 clone for his 81st birthday, just to keep me from spending more money on more lathe that I have no space or (planned) use for

Cheers,
Andrew

Hi all, I had a bit of a look at ozmestore on eGay and found this lathe for under $3000

Please read and tell me what you think.

36"X12" GEARED HEAD METAL LATHE W/COOLANT+LIGHT+STAND (NEW)
*vibration free for work requiring the closest tolerances, superior construction includes high tensile cast iron lathe bed, precision V-beds are hardened and ground, all gears, bearings, and slide surfaces are designed with fully effective lubrication, gear drive headstock for quick change of spindle speeds, including a full set of change gears for metric and imperial theard cutting, adjustable taper roller bearings support the spindle, quick action feed gearbox for thread cutting, automatic cross and longitudinal power feeds, D1-4 camlock spindle for quick chuck change and safe reverse direction turning, removable gap bedway for larger diameter jobs, with lubricated feed gears, enclose gearbox, factory coolant and worklight
*specification:
-max.swing over bed:12" (300mm)
-max.swing over cross slide: 7" (178mm)
-max.swing over gap: 17" (430mm)
-max.length of work piece: 36" (914mm)
-spindle bore: 1.5" (38mm)
-taper of spindle bore: MT5
-range of spindle speeds: 9 steps (50-1500rpm)
-metric threads can be cut (26 kinds): 0.4-7.0mm
-inch threads can be cut (34 kinds): 4-56tpi
-cutting tools to use size:12mm x 12mm (1/2"x1/2")
-saddle feed range per spindle revolution:32 kinds, 0.052-1.392mm/rev
-cross feed range per spindle revolution:32 kinds, 0.014-0.38mm/rev
-max. turn angle of tool post:+90° and -90°
-tool slide travel:3"(76mm)
-cross slide travel:5-1/8"(130mm)
-tailstock taper: MT3
-dia. of tailstock quill:1-1/4"(32mm)
-max. travel of tailstock quill:4"(100mm)
-motor: 1.5HP (1.1KW)/240v/1ph
-shipping weight:550kgs
-packing size:167x75x72cm, 67x38x28cm, 67x38x35cm
*accessories:coolant pump, worklight, 6" 3-jaws chuck, 8" 4-jaws chuck, 10" face plate, dead center, fixed stedy, travelling steady, splash guard, chip tray, stand cabinet, change gears, toolbox etc

How about this one. http://cgi.ebay.com.au/METAL-LATHE-M...QQcmdZViewItem

George,

Its got all the bits n pieces of a regular lathe. Somewhere I missed the hp rating? Thne only thing that would be nice is a greater variation on the spoeed range, but then for less than 3k its not bad.

A couple of things to ask the vendor: I am assuming your familar with lathes to some extent.

[a] do the nuts to the cross slide, compound slide have half nuts? Reason as they wear, which they all do, you can take up the backlash.
[b] Also on the dove tail slides to the cross slide and compound slide have a tapered gibb. Reason being in time the slides will wear and with this you can take up the slack.

Otherwise I think its not a bad deal for the price.