Thread: CNC lathes

Look around for a good quality lathe (Colchester, Harrison, Graziano, Meuser, etc), second-hand but not more than 40 years old, 50mm spindle bore, 1 metre between centres with both metric and imperial threads. Probably in the $6-10K range. They will do everything you want with accuracy and no need to learn the CNC gobbledegook which is a bit of a mystery to us older dinosaurs!. For one-off work the normal lathe is much faster to set-up and use.

Originally Posted by gundoc

Look around for a good quality lathe (Colchester, Harrison, Graziano, Meuser, etc), second-hand but not more than 40 years old, 50mm spindle bore, 1 metre between centres with both metric and imperial threads. Probably in the $6-10K range. They will do everything you want with accuracy and no need to learn the CNC gobbledegook which is a bit of a mystery to us older dinosaurs!. For one-off work the normal lathe is much faster to set-up and use.

I know of a Colchester VS3250 - about 1993 (?) that is on the market be about $12k - digital readout/10hp - 750mm between centres/50mm spindle - - But for the same money that will get you a basic new chinese one - $30k to get a decent lathe the equivalent of the Colchester