home shop lathe

[WinterDeere]

Hey guys,

I lost access to the lathe I've been using for small projects over the last 15 years, and I've got enough small jobs on the horizon that I'd better get moving with a quick replacement.

I love the vintage old USA equipment, in fact I have a shop full of vintage woodworking machines, but I don't really have time for a restoration or repair right now. So as much as it pains me, I'm probably looking at import junk.

Any suggestions on where to start? Brands? Retailers? Looking to turn and bore everything from loader pins to aluminum cylinders of a few inches diameter (work stuff). Also looking for something that could make a poor-man's horizontal mill in a pinch, you know the old trick of putting an end mill in the chuck and your work on the tool holder.

I still use a commercial shop for most of my work, so this is really more for one-offs, prototypes, and repairs. Don't need much length, or even a ton of throw, but wanting see what's available before putting numbers to it.

Thanks!

 

[repete]

I make a lot of stuff in my Chinese Enco lathe. I last week turned a new piston for a hydraulic cylinder and turned the end of a chromed rod to accept the piston and nut.
The more time I spend machining the more I have come to believe a poor quality machine can produce reasonable stuff in the right hands. A high quality machine, in the wrong hands, can make junk.

 

[the old grind]

Tell us more about the lathe you're familiar with. Make, swing, chuck(s) length between centers, hp, speeds, whatever. It'll help us somehow, I'm sure.

IMO you could be good to go in the $2-5k range and hopefully including tooling, which can be half of it.

Opportunities exist and the more you shop new or used the better. Don't be in a rush to gear up and look for reviews, videos, forums on models your considering.

 

[bird dogger]

I have a South Bend 10K lathe and use it all the time.
One easy way to search for the brand/model/size of your choice is to "Search All of Craigslist"for your lathe preference. Then you can select to list the results by "Relevance" or "Date". If you select the "Date" option, the new listings appear first. The results will show up from any Craigslist add in the US.

You might get lucky and find some vintage old iron.....South Bend, Leblond, Monarch, etc. near you or within traveling distance. Even shipping can sometimes be reasonable for the right machine!

 

[pmsmechanic]

I looked for a used lathe for years and finally gave up on that idea. About 4 years ago I started to squirrel away a bit of cash when ever I could. Over the last year I was able to purchase a brand new lathe. I went against conventional advice (half lathe and half tooling) and bought what I knew I would be able to use. I can always add tooling etc as I need it but it's a big pain to realize that you didn't buy enough of a machine to begin with. The best advice I got was that I would always be able to sell a descent sized lathe but a hobby lathe would be harder to get rid of, if it came to that.

What I bought was a Modern Tool 14 x 40 with a 2" bore. It came with a QCTP, 4 holders, 7 ceramic bit holders of different styles and a DRO. I've since added a drill chuck for the tail post, a live center, center drill bits and some end mills. I have some measuring tools and will buy more as I need them. The same lathe right now is around $2000 more than I paid for mine so if I had to sell it there is a potential to come out ahead. Some days I question my sanity at what I did but so far I'm not sorry.

 

[MTGreen]

I think Grizzly is the way to go. Their stuff is made in East Asia but they are very good about ensuring quality control and parts availability. Many professional shops buy and run Grizzly machines. My primary lathe is an older Clausing but I've made a number of parts on my father's Grizzly "gunsmithing" model lathe (mostly because mine doesn't have metric threading capability) and it's a nice machine capable of keeping good tolerances. Were I in the market for a ready to run machine I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Grizzly.

 

[fatjay]

All is not lost. I picked up my lathe for $100 on facebook marketplace. It's in excellent condition and spindle is true. Super durable as well.

 

[rScotty]

I was looking for a nice home shop lathe when I ran across this light duty 12" Atlas with the factory underdrive and long bed. It came with a ton of tooling - 3 and 4 jaw chucks, all the manuals, quick change tool holders.... on and on. Like new condition.

It wasn't my first choice - I was looking for something more "vintage" or else more modern. I also like a lot of imporrted machine tools from Taiwan and Japan 30/40 years ago. I seems that any country on its way to becoming a modern industrial power needs to make a really high quality machine tools for their own industry. And as they do so, it is a natural for those tools to become a high value-added export for them. Much the same as we saw in small 4wd tractors from Japan and Asia where an industry developed for a domestic use became a good export item.

The Atlas 12" commercial 3000 series was made in England and sold in the US for many years. Ultimately Sears bought it - Back when the Craftsman brand meant good quality... not TOP QUALITY...... but very good quality for the price.

It is adequate for a home shop. For pins and bushings and making tooling it is perfect. It is more than accurate enough for small motor and pump rebuilds. I use it a surprising amount for cabinetry. A downside is that the bore through the headstock spindle is oddly small, which limits using long round stock. And the old lantern style tool holder and cross slide is not as rigid as it should be for accurate work. That means the micrometer cross slide dials are not dependable and that turning to a thousanth of an inch means constant stopping and measuring - but it doe have a rigid headstock with good bearings there. Upgrading to a heavy Aloris quick change tool holder really helped with the cross slide tooling rigidity.

The quick change gear feeds cover every common Imperial and metric threads.

Atlas 3000s are often inexpensive on the used market because of the flat ways - although that way geometry is a matter of preference as much as anything else on a home shop lathe. When new, both styles are equally good. The OEM bearings, gib adjustments, and bushings are first class throughout. Runs very quietly and powerfully on 110v.


rScotty

 

[5030]

O have one of them, fully tooled with Timken tapered roller bearings in the headstock. Got it cheap at an estate sale. Nice machines. Not as nice as my LeBlond Servo Shift however.

 

[solo machine]

I bought a Precision Mathews lathe two-three yrs ago. 14x40, 2" bore, DRO's, variable speed.
The cost has gone up. You can find good, low cost lathes around. Just a waiting period to find one.
I'm very happy with mine, and Matt is really easy guy to work with.
I always hated the small bore machines. At my old job we bought a Precision Mathews 16x50, 3"bore, DRO's
not variable but now we can cut metric threads. Before I would bring home any threading work needing done.
When the office people found out, they started looking to buy the company one.

 

[rScotty]

O have one of them, fully tooled with Timken tapered roller bearings in the headstock. Got it cheap at an estate sale. Nice machines. Not as nice as my LeBlond Servo Shift however.

No, it's not as nice as a LeBlond or Clausing. I don't really have a use for a real indusrial size lathe, but just like in tractors there is less downside to a large lathe than one would think. Other than pure size of course. In my little shop with 6" concrete floors I could fit and use something at least twice as capable as the Atlas 3000. It gets by. I paid a reasonable price and am not enthusiastic enough to go through all the effort to install a larger machine... so the Atlas will probably stay - even though that wasn't the original plan.
I once acquired a barn cat on a similar basis.

It's rare to see any good small to medium size lathes for sale. Everyonce in a while I do run across really great deals on large lathes that some business wants to get rid of for a pittance. Scrap prices mostly. If I was doing it again, that's where I'd be looking. Problem would be finding one that can be made to run on basic 220v.

 

[sd455dan]

Still happy with my 12 X 24 HF Taiwan gap bed lathe which seems to be the same as an Enco of the same size and vintage.

When people say you can easily spend more on tooling than the lathe itself they are not kidding.

 

[WranglerX]

Think I would haunt local places like "facebook marketplace"... Have seen several lathes show up over last several months....

 

[rScotty]

Something to think about when looking at machine tools: our milling machine probably gets 5x the use as the lathe. It is a Rockwell - smaller than a Bridgeport, but similar quality with an R8 spindle and a 3 phase 220 VFD motor. Mills double as drill presses, too.

 

[Death Row Dave]

Clausing 10 for me .

 

[otlski]

A used 9 inch South Bend Heavy is nice.

Funny. At work, manufacturing new components for machinery, the millers see 90% of the spindle time; lathes are at 10%. At home doing equipment repairs (mainly), the lathe sees 90% of my usage.

 

[WinterDeere]

Great replies, guys. Keep them coming. Re: Atlas, owned one many years ago. Worked well enough for simple shop repairs, etc. Not a bad option, for benchtop scale.

The machines I've used in the past are all larger, not really practical for consideration in my home shop. They were purchased and sized for jobs bigger than I really need to be doing on my own, not that my plans for this are fully known, yet. I also work with a few local machine shops for my business, so I'll continue to send even my larger personal stuff to them, I'd just like to have the ability to do the small jobs on my own. For example, if I need to bore a grease journal in a pin, and don't want to play the poor-man's "use your drill press as a lathe with a chuck bolted to the table" game.

Something to think about when looking at machine tools: our milling machine probably gets 5x the use as the lathe. It is a Rockwell - smaller than a Bridgeport, but similar quality with an R8 spindle and a 3 phase 220 VFD motor. Mills double as drill presses, too.

Definitely. But right now I'm good with sending that stuff out to one of the shops that already does regular work for me. If I get a mill, I'll be dedicating a garage bay to it, whereas the lathe can be benchtop for most of my needs.

Another resource I could lean on is the dozens of freelance guys on the practical machinist forum. I've had contact with some of them in the past, re: assembly tooling for assembling various parts I manufacture for my business.

 

[BravoXray]

I hauled a lot of machinery for a local customer, and told the salesman I dealt with that if he came across a decent small lathe to let me know. A few months later he called and said he had a floor model Jet BD-920N that he would make me a deal on, so I bought it. I don't use it a lot, but when I need to turn something for a project, it's sure nice to have. I did replace the toolpost with a QC post and made few other minor tweaks, so it does a pretty good job for what I need a lathe for.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

I think Grizzly is the way to go. Their stuff is made in East Asia but they are very good about ensuring quality control and parts availability. Many professional shops buy and run Grizzly machines. My primary lathe is an older Clausing but I've made a number of parts on my father's Grizzly "gunsmithing" model lathe (mostly because mine doesn't have metric threading capability) and it's a nice machine capable of keeping good tolerances. Were I in the market for a ready to run machine I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Grizzly.

Buying out of Asia, a manufacturer has to be very careful how they wright the contract. Because they will do tings as cheaply as the contract allows them to. You need to specify everything, specify what standards of inspection will be, and clarify that they can’t sell the seconds they may produce, and that you own the design. They give you exactly what they agree to, but you need to be sure you tell them everything which is expected..

Grizzly gets very fine to just so so, machines and tools made in Chiwan, becasue they know how to do business in the east, write very good contracts, and have established long term relationships with the manufacturers they deal with.

 

[LD1]

Id rather buy vintage stuff if its still tight. If it isnt.....look into rebuild kits if available. '''

I have a monarch model k. 16x54. Weighs about 4200#. I consider it about the perfect size for doing odd tractor pins and bushings and what not.