Good 'Hobby Quality' Metal Lathes

[tmj]

I want a lathe. There are lots of them out there. Some are good, some are bad... and prices are all over the place. I'm not interested in a wood lathe as I already have one of those. I also don't need a $3,000 dollar metal lathe. I'd never get my money's worth out of something like that! Have any of you guys bought any of those cheaper table-top 'Amazon' lathes, Proxxon, etc.? I'd like to know what your firsthand experiences have been with your machines. Please, don't respond with "I've seen," "I've heard," etc. I've seen and 'heard' too! I want to hear facts from people who actually own and use these machines.

[LoydB]

I love my Sherline. 

[tmj]

2 minutes ago, LoydB said:

I love my Sherline.

What do you 'love' about it? Elaborate, please!

[Y.T.]

I own Sherline lathe and Sherline mill.  I also own Unimat lathe. This is all I will ever need for modeling. What is good about them? They are good.

[palmerit]

I asked something similar a while back - don’t know if there’s anything here that’s useful: 

I did not end getting a lathe or a mill. Maybe someday. 

[ChrisLBren]

Have a look at TAIG lathes as well.  I do not own one but am very happy with their mill and will be purchasing one in the near future.

[Toolmaker]

Capacity and power?

What size workpiece do you want to machine. What material do you want to machine and how much metal do you want to remove in a cut. Not withstanding, how much space can I dedicate to the machine and how much machine running noise is acceptable.

If it’s true model making you want and it has the capacity (workpiece size) you need, then Sherline is a great piece of kit for the money. Sherline is way ahead of Proxxon and is excellent in all ways straight out of the box. It was my choice and they have to be imported to the UK making them considerably more expensive than you can get them for in the States. Take a look and see how well developed their whole system is.

My decision was also aligned to me wanting to use my modelling machines in the house rather than a “workshop”.

Hope that helps a little

Paul

 

Edited Monday at 01:00 PM by Toolmaker

[kurtvd19]

I have owned both a Taig and a Sherline lathe.  Both are excellent machines.  The Taig will do all you want - the only reason I got the Sherline though was because the price was just about free - couldn't turn it down, but I can't do anything with the Sherline I can't do with the Taig.  I am not a machinist and only a machinist can use a Sherline to it's full capacity.

Kurt

[CPDDET]

Sherline was my choice because of quality build, customer support and full range of accessories. 

[sheepsail]

I also have both Taig and a Sherline lathes with many attachments which I use interchangeably.  At the moment these are boxed up.

 

My main lathe though is a Präzi from East Germany.  These were dumped in the US in the 1980s, and 1990s.  When they were replaced by the Swiss lathes. 

 

The lathe is not so much about the lathe itself.  It is about the attachments and tooling.  The collets and such what hold the work.  Some of the best come from Cowels in England which make some excellent stuff.

 

My other hobby is watchmaking so I have a few of warchmaker lathes as well.    I had a friend who had a Sears Atlas lathe which I loved.   Ironically to best make the tiny watch parts a big tool and die lathe is something I dream about.   With a big lathe one can make the fixtures for the small lathe.

 

As I get deeper into model ship building I am looking forward to seeing if I can use this equipment to turn toothpicks into the tiny fixtures the model so demands.

 

Woodworking and watchmaking prior to World War 1 in the 1920s was done with hand held tools.  (there were stories of master watchmakers making lathes from three large horseshoe nails.)  So it becomes about sharpening the gravers.

 

The critical thing about a lathe is a parameter called run out.  the other is swing.   Runout is how round you can make the part and is determined by the bearings. Air bearings are the best. Babbit works surprisingly well.  Babbit is tin lead solder so it is liquid when the bearings are spinning and creating heat.  So a cheap lathe or dremel will have cheap bearings.  So one side will be out of round where the tool catches. 

 

Swing is the largest item that can be turned without banging into things.

 

Lead screws are what allow items to be replicated.  Such were done with patterns.  This was industrialized in the 18th century. (1700s)   Milling is also considered lathe work.   This is also when the punch cards came about then the paper tapes, which could create the rivets and such. Cams could move the tooling and such in amazingly complex patterns.  Someone realized that everything could be created with an infinite number of sin and cosine waves.   These were called "imaginary" numbers.     

 

Alan Turing used this abstraction  to make a machine which could move a string (finite infinity) back and forth and make marks on it.  Then use the marks to move the string.   Such is what a machinist does when turning the handles of a lathe (2D) or a mill (3D)  Good machinist are great at arithmetic, pretty much human computers (what the word originally meant.)   They can feel all of this intuitively.  (the cards (digital) /cams(analog) record what they do for playback.) 

 

What a lot of people do not know about a guy named Babbage in the 1830s and designed the first computer.  First he had to make (or invent) a lathe to make it.   Leonardo da Vinchi had documented the lathes used by the Greeks and Romans (and Egyptians) and made the Antikythera device.   According to Archimedes a screw is an inclined plane or triangle.  (which is what a sine wave looks like when graphed)   So Babbage had to find the perfect screw. (rimshot)   His mechanics Clement and Withworth fought over who actually invented the machine 19th century lathe.   Whitworth got the credit.   And screws are all now standard shaped.  In reality all three invented the modern lathe.  Ego can sometimes set thing back a generation or more. 

 

As a child I met Frank Oppenheimer.  (yes him.)  Who was working on a lathe behind a wooden partition I could hardly look over at the ExplOritiorum.  He told me a lathe was a special tool since It could make a copy of itself.  In other words It could make anything.  Such statements like that keep me up at night.

 

Ironically AI, uses this same statistical math.  To make copies of ideas.  Like a panto-graph, which lathes and milling machines use to make things larger and smaller.  This device shows that everything is an infinite sum of waves around a circle. I guess what the Theosophist call vibrations.  This is called a space time transform.  Often called a Fourier transform after some 18th century dude who was good with lathes and estimating things like the population of France was after they cut the head off the leaders.   He and his friends also measured exactly how large the coastline of France was.  Ben Franklin was doing similar things in America with Kites and governments.  (did you know Franklin invented the spark plug?  Fun at parties, Volta used it to light farts on fire. Which is why electricity is measured in volts.  Steam engines and internal combustion engines are also abstractly lathes.)

 

In the 1960s and 1970s this math was done with a computer. Some guys named like Cooly and Turky made Fourier transforms fast.   GPUs use matrix math billions of times a second to display images.  Now abstract ideas.  Even more so that there is some weird thing called spin, what creates magnetism or polarization in light.   So I think Mr Oppenheimer was right.  That the universe is some sort of quantum lathe.

 

Not sure how to fit one other useless abstract bit of info into this digression.  A way of visualizing Fourier's singularity. Which is a pixel.  In space a pixel looks like a square or cube.  In time it looks like a Mexican hat with  wide brim or probably a better image ripples on the surface of a pond.   These things also have sound.  (and color) what we call frequency.   This is also what happens at the center of a lens where all the light ray meet.  One can make a lens with a lathe.  So we come about here in a full circle.  AI is simply simulating what is happening at the center of a lens.  (and we know what happens when one uses magnifying glass and the sun. Pirates only have one eye as they had to learn how to properly use a sextant or spyglass.  Do not look at sun with remaining eye.)  

 

None of which answers what brand lathe is best.  Personally I'd give emphasis on anything Swiss, since that is what the other countries aspire to. 

 

(no AI was used in the creation if this ramble.  -- otherwise it would make sense.) 

 

-julie

 

[tmj]

Very impressive, and 'also' quite informative, Julie! Something tells me that you also probably know what E=mc² 'truly' represents! 😏

[druxey]

Well, there have been many good points raised. The most pertinent being what is the range of items you want to make on this hypothetical lathe? If it's only occasional small parts of medium precision, an old original Unimat will so the trick nicely. Mine is from the early '70's before they went to plastic parts. High precision small parts? A well-kept used watchmakers' lathe. A Boley or Levin are good - I've used both. However, items like collets can run up the cost quickly. Serious model engineering? Sherline.

 

Julie: those 19th century inventors and engineers are a fascinating study in themselves. Brunel Senior's block-making machines, for a start.

[tmj]

4 minutes ago, druxey said:

Well, there have been many good points raised. The most pertinent being what is the range of items you want to make on this hypothetical lathe? If it's only occasional small parts of medium precision, an old original Unimat will so the trick nicely. Mine is from the early '70's before they went to plastic parts.

Well said David! Small, occasional parts of medium precision will be my only use of such a lathe. I have large, accurate lathes at work, but they are no fun. I want a lathe to make small, not extremely precise parts while watching TV and relaxing at home with my 'unprecise' hobbies. Brass or steel cannons, wooden stanchions, aluminum doodads, etc. Fancy, 'yes'... 'precise', not so much! 🙂  

[wefalck]

A topic one can discuss for hours and there are already several threads on this topic here on the forum. As @toolmaker said, the first thing to do is to make a list of the enveloppe you think you will need and of the capabilities required - then go for a lathe about twice the size. One always underestimates the distance between centres and swing needed (BTW, in the US the 'swing', i.e. the maximum diameter of parts is given, while in Europe it is the centre height, i.e. the height above the bed or the radius!).

The next key question is, whether you think that one day you may want to cut threads: neither old Unimat nor the Taig doesn't have this capability ex-factory, but there are several suggestions for retro-fitting on the Internet; the Sherline has this as an extra to be purchased; the medium to larger PROXXON models and the the Cowells ME lathe have the capability build in; the various modern Chinese lathes have this capability, but (plastic) change-wheels may need to be purchased as an extra; classical watchmaking lathes do not need thread-cutting capability, but it was offered for some of the WW-type models (Lorch, Schmidt & Co., Wolf, Jahn & Co., Boley, Leinen, and Levin), but prices on the secondhand-market tend to be astronomical.

Personally, I prefer working with collets, rather than three- or four-jaw chucks. Much safer and much better repeatability. Not all lathes have a spindle-cone to take in collets, for some so-called collet-chucks are/were available (Unimat, Proxxon). The Sherline has a spindle-cone and a limited range of collets is available, but with an adapter, standard WW-type watchmaking collets can used (available from Sherline, albeit not the same quality as the original ones). On watchmaking lathes collets are a standard feature.

The 'feel' while working with the handwheels or ball-cranks is important, how smooth are the spindles and what about backlash (the amount you can turn the wheel before a movement of the slide occurs), can it be adjusted?

Related to this is how smoth the slides work and how well the adjustment via gib-strips work. These features can vary from individual lathe to individual lathe. For me these are crucial features to achieve good results.

Another question to consider is, whether one has the space for a permanent set-up or has to move the lathe into storage after use. In the latter case, the Chinese and larger PROXXON lathes are probably out, because they tend to be too large and heavy. The old-time Unimat came with a nice storage case, as did normally all watchmaking lathes. Otherwise, the Sherline and Taig seem to be quite mobile.

And one more thing to consider: the cost of (quite essential) accessories, such as chucks, collets, tooling etc. can be as high as the basic lathe.

 

BTW, engine and watchmaking lathes in their 'modern' form have been around since the 1870s to 1880s, not only since the 1920s. Strangely enough many watchmakers/-repairers today still prefer to work with handgravers rather than sliderests with toolbits (as on engine lathes) - this works for the generally short workpieces they need, but making multiple parts to the same dimensions with this method is a pain unless you are well-practiced. The handgraver together with a so-called T-rest (inexplicably expensive attachment to the Sherline ...) is excellent for shaping parts such as bells.

 

Another point: Babbitt-bearings to the best of my knowledge were never used on such small machine tools. They were not suited to the high speeds at which these machines commonly run (typically between 1000 and 5000 rpm) and probably would not be precise enough. Cheaper machines originally used lapped bronze cone-bearings in which hard steel spindles ran, while the high-end watchmaking lathes have glass-hard steel cone-bearings in which glass-hard steel spindles run. Today model-engineering lathes usually have either a combination of radial and axial ball-bearings or taper roller-bearings that take up both, axial and radial loads.

 

Edited 17 hours ago by wefalck

[Y.T.]

Speaking of collets for Sherline, I just purchased ER16 collet holder on AliExpress. Sherline uses Morse #1 cone. This holder costs CAD 16 with shipping. Set of ER16 collets from 1 mm to 13 mm I got for CAD 27. This is just a small fraction of what Sherline charges for their collets. And the ER collets also more useful than ones they sell to my opinion.

 

 

[wefalck]

Remember that double-slotted collets, such as the ER-type are designed for holding tools or round stock. The material has to go through the whole length of the collet or nearly so. Pieces of less than half the length of the collet cannot be securely clamped, as tightening the collet has the tendency to squeeze the part out of the collet ... there is also the risk of damaging the collet in this way.

[NavyShooter]

Sounds to me as though you're looking for a Sherline or Unimat size/style lathe.

 

I had a Sherline, and a Unimat, and found them small for the work I mostly do.  I do hobby stuff, but metal work was mostly related to fire-stick linear projectile accelerator systems.  If you catch my drift....

 

The Sher/Uni were both too small for my desires.  

I sold the Sher/Uni and got a used Southbend 10K from a high school sale, which I ended up selling to buy a Precision Matthews 10x30 lathe about 7 years ago.  The SB was in rough shape - ways were demolished from 3 generations of kids dropping stuff on them.  

 

The PM doesn't have a quick change gear box for thread cutting, but it does have gears you can swap around to cut threads.  It came with a QCTP and a variety of tooling.  Runs on 120V, and does all I've asked it to do.  It's not a business machine, it's a hobby machine, running it for 10 hours a day would be rough on it I think.  Running it for a few hours on the weekend, and a couple nights a week?  No problem. 

 

That said, since it sounds like size is the biggest concern you have, I'll suggest the Sherline, as it's got a lot of accessories available.  Tooling is important and Sherline has oodles of it out there available. 

NS 

 

[druxey]

I would normally never dare to contradict wefalck, but the 'old' Unimat DB/SL had a (metric) thread-cutting attachment (no. 1270) available years ago. Examples are still available, for a price, on the second hand market.

[wefalck]

Oh yes, you are right. I had been thinking of lead-screws and changewheels, but the UNIMAT one was of the cartridge-type, where are cartridge with a master-thread that is screwed to the  lathe spindle and there is a follower on a bar behind the lathe that engages with the master-thread and moves the cutting tool along. It the kind you would find mainly on lathes for the optical industry, where short, but very precise threads are needed.

Here is a picture from www.lathes.uk.co:

In nearly 30 years of scanning the Internet for lathe attachments and the likes, I have seen may be two units for sale.

 

Ah, and one more important point to watch out, when buying a lathe: ideally, you want to have zero-ing dials on the handwheels. That makes turning to pre-defined points without calculating so much easier. On the hand, once you have a lathe, you can perhaps retro-fit them yourself - a lathe is a self-replicating tool.

Edited 16 hours ago by wefalck

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  Since my Unimat was given to me free from my Dad (I don't think he ever used it) I've hung on to it for a variety of odd jobs: e.g. turning aluminum barrel extensions and parfocalization rings for 2" telescope eyepieces (about the limit for the little lathe, using a 4 jaw independent chuck and light cuts all around for the o.d. and i.d.);  altering large caliber brass casings for an antique Spencer carbine (3 jaw universal chuck comes in handy);  turning small diameter steel parts for antique gun locks.  (The underpowered lathe can only handle small diameter/light cut work in mild steel ... seems the unit was intended for brass & aluminum.);  turning and/or tapering masts and spars for ship modeling.

  I found some largish rubber o-rings to use as belts, and generally set the belts for the lowest speed.  Some tooling can be found on line, like a milling table, tool bits, etc.  I should look for a live center.

[tmj]

I'm actually eyeballing a used Unimat jeweler's lathe right now, wooden case and a handful of accessories included. Not sure if I'll ever want to cut threads, as so far I haven't yet had the need to do that. I typically use taps and dies when threads are required. I'm reading everyone's posts and simply trying to narrow things down. Keep the banter going and I'll surely land on something for certain real soon! Thanks for all of the feedback, so far!  

[wefalck]

Just to clarify a misnomer: the UNIMAT is not a jeweller‘s (American for watchmaker) lathe. It is designed as a modeller‘s lathe. It just doesn’t have the precision of a real one.

 

I don’t know, whether this applies to all versions, but it’s motor is notorious for giving up prematurely …

[druxey]

Slightly off-topic: wefalck; there are a number of Unimat thread chasers and patterns currently listed on eBay. It is surprising how many 'NOS' items pop up there, as well as used.

[Toolmaker]

5 hours ago, wefalck said:

Oh yes, you are right. I had been thinking of lead-screws and changewheels, but the UNIMAT one was of the cartridge-type, where are cartridge with a master-thread that is screwed to the  lathe spindle and there is a follower on a bar behind the lathe that engages with the master-thread and moves the cutting tool along.

Interesting.

The Hardinge HC was often fitted with a similar attachment. I was a long time user of Hardinge machines in a past life and for small part, high precision, non automatic production work, they were probably unbeatable.

[tmj]

The seller of the Unimat sent me a video, with sound, so I could hear 'and' see the machine run. It looks quite smooth, no blurry wobble... but it's definitely a bit noisy. Sounds like the bearings either need to be re-packed with grease or possibly replaced with new bearings. I've contacted a source for new bearings... just waiting for a response. 

[Y.T.]

1 hour ago, tmj said:

The seller of the Unimat sent me a video, with sound, so I could hear...

It is not necessarily a bearing issue. Unimat I have has a pretty loud motor. Louder than Sherline.

[palmerit]

I’m curious if lathes are either sized for small work (like on a model ship) OR larger work (like turning a bowl, or if here are lathes that do both. Is it simply a trade off of small for precision at the price of limited diameter of a piece vs larger for the power (with less needed precision) to turn something many times larger than what you’d need for a model ship. Or does BOTH mean paying 10x the price?

[yamsterman]

Hi

Just throw in my personal preference.

Unimat 3 Austrian made.....more than accurate enough for ship model making and any other small turning jobs.

Works with wood and metal.

The original motors have a limited run time and only two speed settings.

Then you have too mess about changing belts.

Changed the motor for a continuous rated DC unit.......nothing wrong with old motor keep that as spare.

Loads of accessories available online.

Hope this helps

Cheers....mick

[wefalck]

Precision and surface quality depends on many factors. Vibration is a problem and a lot of mass helps to keep it down, which is why toolroom lathes are heavy, several hundred kg or pounds. On such lathes you can minute precision parts, we are talking about tolerances in the range of 1/100 of a mm or better. Slides are scraped (or precision ground) and lead-screws are ground snd lapped for smooth operation and uniformity along the whole length of travel.

For shipmodelling this not normally needed. Tolerances in the order of 1/20 mm (the minor division on most dials) is sufficient. Most of our parts are quite short and we work on stock held in a chuck or collet. Re-chucking to work on the other end of a part is less frequently needed, which removes concentricity issues. Even with a lower quality lathe thus good results can be achieved.

For hobby work a bench-lathe is perfectly adequate, we don’t need heavy floorstanding toolroom-lathes.

[wefalck]

@druxey, being the lucky owner of a Lorch, Schmidt & Co. WW-pattern watchmaker’s lathe, probably from the 1950s, with the extremely rare screwcutting attachment, I haven’t actively looked for those thread-chasing attachments anymore for years … as the generation of the original owners slowly dies out, they may appear on the market more frequently now.