Tips for evaluating a lathe before purchase?

I am looking for a lathe. I see many with a wide spread on cost near me ($500 to $5000). I am not a machinist by trade and so my use of a lathe has been making my own silly stuff on a borrowed hobbyist's machinery. He bought new to avoid this issue and still ended up working on it to make it be precise. He moved. I miss the access.

I can check bearings... look at the ways, put a dial indicator on the spindle... but what am I looking for to ensure avoiding rebuilding a lathe before using one?

My primary usage is making things like nylon bushings, a little threading, making a retaining clip groove, etc... so not really mind-blowing stuff but I'd like enough precision to grow into more sophisticated stuff.

backlash in any of the screws on the carriage or cross slide.

Also if you are interested in threading make sure it actually has that screw. Many lathes out there don't come with it.. ( I can't remember the proper name)...

seriously, read this.. much better than I could type out here.
http://www.mermac.com/advicenew.html

It's called a leadscrew. All but the cheapest lathes come with one.

I've got a Southbend 9x34 in my home shop and a Grizzly geardhead about the same size at work.

I like my southbend for a hobby lathe but it's pretty worn. Hopefully my hindsight will help you out a bit.

Try to get a lathe with a quick-change gearbox if you're doing threading. Manually swapping gears is a PITA and if you're like me and you buy a lathe without the gears, you'll hate yourself when you need to find them.

A power cross feed is also very desireable. My lathe doesn't have it and I wish it did. It only has a power apron feed which you just can't be without.

ANY lathe will need some setup when you get it home. You will need to tweak the adjustments in the jibs, tailstock and backlash adjusters. You'll need to know how to do this for proper maintenance anyway.

We've been shopping for a mill recently and Grizzly machiner seems to have some decent quality lathes for home use at pretty reasonable prices. I know people will scream about chinese/taiwanese stuff being crap but hey, it's a fair machine for a fair price. You're not sending your parts into space so do you really need that much machine?

Some lathe is better than no lathe at all.

Shawn

Shawn...

Grizzly tent sale is next weekend and its only 90 min from here. Based on your own pain... does this seem like enough machine for a beginner who can grow into it a little?

LINK HERE

It leaves almost no $ for tooling but I can probably do that over time as necessary rather than buying a whole pile of stuff I might never need.

I like it.

I paid $1000CDN for this (it came with ALL the tooling, not shown), and thought it was a screaming deal:

Mine does not have the quick change gearbox (I have a stack of gears to pick from), but I don't really care - it's not often that I do threading and need a specific feed.

If you're buying used, check the ways. They wear closer to the chuck faster than the tail and they will end up sway backed like an old horse. The slide needs to be tight from one end to the other, not tight at the tail and loose at the chuck. They can be scraped, but it is a PITA. Just about everything else on the machine is adjustable. Probably once a year I have to set the leadscrew backlash and gibes on both of my machines.

Some of the Chinese stuff is crap. My HF mini-mill required a complete tear down and cleaning to get the gunk someone thought was grease out of it. It was also full of casting sand in every nook and cranny. It works pretty good, but not near like my lathe.

My 50s era South Bend 9a lathe is one of the best machines I have ever bought. Power feed on everything, quick change gear box, the works. It was $400. The only thing I have done to it is add a variable speed DC motor to it.

Keep in mind the cost of the machine isn't close to what it will cost to get into machining. I've got about $900 in the mill and lathe, and another $2000 in tooling, chucks and vices. If you buy used, sometimes you can get some of the tooling thrown in on the deal. Keep an eye on Craigslist and be quick to jump. The good deals get snapped up fast.

In reply to SkinnyG:

You teach machine shop, right? Was that an educational discount or something I could buy for close to that money?

Toyman01 wrote: Keep in mind the cost of the machine isn't close to what it will cost to get into machining. I've got about $900 in the mill and lathe, and another $2000 in tooling, chucks and vices. If you buy used, sometimes you can get some of the tooling thrown in on the deal. Keep an eye on Craigslist and be quick to jump. The good deals get snapped up fast.

Yeah, I know - I have a race car. The cost to buy the car is nothing compared to the cost of keeping/building it... hell, why do you think I need a lathe :)

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: You teach machine shop, right? Was that an educational discount or something I could buy for close to that money?

Through a friend who was selling off a wack of equipment. The lathe was brand new.

That grizzly unit looks like a decent rig. It's nice that it comes with two chucks, a faceplate, steady rest and follower rest. That gives you a lot to work with. The price is good.

Right off the bat, I would say you should buy a live center. You can't do a whole lot without it. Add a drill chuck for the tailstock to the list as well. It's the next most useful thing.

Next thing would be a quick change toolpost, I put one on my southbend and it is the best thing I ever did to it. Tool changes are simple and there is less chatter and vibration. A rocker or turret style post (what comes with the grizzly) gets old very quick. http://www.grizzly.com/products/Quick-Change-Tool-Post-Set-10-Swing/G5689

The MT3 taper is good to have, you've got the best selection of tooling with MT3.

It's strange that they would sell it with a faceplate and dead centre but no drive dogs to use with the faceplate.

You'll probably never need a faceplate, dogs and a dead centre unless you're machining gun barrels or something similar with a long taper.

Hope that helps.

Shawn

I'm in the market for something similar, but I keep finding that the bores max out around 3/4".... not so good if you want to turn bushings and get a good center. Any thoughts? My micro machining handbook doesn't explicitly show how to do it, and I can't quite imagine a setup in my head.

Not a hijack per se- but interested in a lathe for similar purposes.

One area you might want to check are resale/antique-type shops (found a perfect condition small lathe at one for $75, owner had no idea what he had), and pawn shops. Garage/yard sales/estate sales. Public notices of business liquidation/auction. Reality can offer opportunities and suck at the same time.

Teh E36 M3 wrote: I'm in the market for something similar, but I keep finding that the bores max out around 3/4".... not so good if you want to turn bushings and get a good center. Any thoughts? My micro machining handbook doesn't explicitly show how to do it, and I can't quite imagine a setup in my head. Not a hijack per se- but interested in a lathe for similar purposes.

I'm not sure I understand (not a trained machinist either) but for boring the center of a bushing I've always turned the outer stuff first, and then used a drill chuck to bore it along the center dimples.

It is worth re-emphasizing that I am not a machinist and I treat a lathe like a strong drill press that fell over. I look at my goal, google tells me how or I try a bunch of crap until it works. I fall into the category of ruthless hack but I do manage to get things to work more often than not. My goal for getting my own lathe is to learn how to do it the right way so hopefully someone will answer your question and we can both learn something new ;)

The Grizzly I linked above claims 1" bore in the spec.

The bore size isn't the bore of the chuck, it's the headstock spindle bore.

You won't get into the headstock until you're about 4 inches back in the chuck. That should be plenty of room for almost any bushing.

My 1932 SB9C only has a 3/4" spindle bore and it's never been a problem for me.

Shawn

That 1-ish K Grizzly looks really good to me. I am so going to miss cheap Chinese stuff.

My 6" Atlas Clausing has a half inch spindle bore and I find it to be limiting. For example, I make suspension arms from 3/4" OD stock. Won't fit down the the bore.

I have spent all my time on lathes on big old lathes from the '50s or earlier and those Chinese lathes just look so cheap and weak compared to the ones I am used to I can really imagine ever owning one. I believe someone said they were looking for a mill. Look at Kerner Tucker mills. They have the ability to mill curves but a lot of places are selling them of cheap because they are being replaced by CNC mills.

In reply to 96DXCivic:

I have a friend who lives too far away for me to borrow his shop regularly... he has a huge old lathe that looks like you could turn locomotive wheels in it. It was $2k when he got it with tooling from an auction but... he has a 6000sq ft shop, flat bed truck and a fork lift.

I need something I can move with pick-up, engine hoist and set on a workbench to use.

Dr. Hess wrote: That 1-ish K Grizzly looks really good to me. I am so going to miss cheap Chinese stuff.

I understand the 1st part of that pair of sentences to mean that the Grizzly lathe is probably a decent choice by your reckoning.

The 2nd appears to be what is what is called foreshadowing, and I eagerly await the exciting and climactic explanation ;)

Dr. Hess wrote: cheap Chinese stuff.

My lathe is a pre-Harbor Freight-invasion Chinese tool room lathe, it is built well and was clearly designed for easy rebuilding. I bought it for $800 with a broken pinion in the carriage, cleaned up the rack, had Liberty's Gears make a new pinion shaft and it runs pretty well now. It's been used (and abused), but I've tuned it up as best I can for now and for the stuff I make it's adequate.

I've seen a few others (Select, 14" x 30") also for not too much money. They must have come over in the 80's. It's not much more floor space than my old Clausing, but much more capable. If you are willing to deal with the transport and setup, larger lathes can be had very cheap. For example there have been a few Monarch's for great prices (<$2k) in the Detroit area in the last few years. Just watch out for the ones from a high production environment that have no life left in them, by turning all the handles and moving things around can tell you that pretty quickly.

When I say "cheap" in the above sentence, I don't mean cheap as in "junk" but cheap as in a lathe like that for one large. Sure, it may need some cleaning and a tune up when you get it, but that's a lot of machinery for 1K. In a couple years when we are bottoming out, we won't be able to touch something like that from China for under 4-5 large, maybe more. I like shopping at HF. I recently bought a combination belt sander that I'm using to clean up the ends of my 304 tubing before I weld them. It was like $75 or so. I'm just saying enjoy it while you can, because world-wide economics are changing, and that change is going to be fast, like the end of the housing bubble. One day there were new houses going up everywhere, the next, half built house frames sitting there and zero new construction.

In reply to Dr. Hess:

I am of the same mind on that - hopefully we will be manufacturing things here again before we hit the bottom and its done in a scramble out of necessity but... hahahaha, yeah right!

At least I'll be able to earn a living as the only crappy machinist and lousy welder around with my now valuable Chinese junk. If I do it right... maybe it will appreciate :)