Amadeal lathes - Any good??

Nah,

don't waste yer money on 'special' brands when starting out - you will always be able to move a cheap and cheerful lathe on at little risk or cost if you tire of it. Remember 9 out of 10 Myfords advertised for sale (and others of the same ilk) prefer Chum.

As you learn and improve, you will begin to form a view of the exact type of machine you really need and can take your time sourcing it. If you have the room, you may well find you keep the uncomplaining mini lathe to do the gnarly, horrid, cruel, abusive jobs that you wouldn't dare inflict on the frail 'workshop queen' of a certain age, preening herself under her cover in the corner...

Thanks for the words of wisdom...they all makes sense...

As I spent a lot of time sourcing, specifying and buying machinery in a past life and latterly in the Far East here's a bit of information of what goes on out there in regards to the machines available to us in the UK

Most of the imported cheaper manual machines we buy for our hobby are made out in the provinces in pretty basic factories where the working conditions and methods of manufacture we haven't been seen over here for many many years. A lot of their production is for the home market. These machines are then purchased by companies such as Weiss and other brands you may be familiar with. They take in the machines and effectively QC them and upgrade them with such things as CE wiring, better control boards, safety features that are not usually required in the home market addition features etc.,

The machines can be branded e.g. to names of the UK importers and even have importer added branding features such as badges and paint colour. With all this we must understand that the original manufacture is not high tech or particularly to a high accuracy. I have been in factories in Nanjing and seen most of the UK imported mini lathes being worked on on the same line but painted up for different UK importers.

There are always exceptions and Sieg is one of them as they manufacture their machinery in their own factory in Shanghai from start to finish and in that way the quality can be maintained and be better, thus the higher price because labour rates and company costs are higher in the Cities.

So it depends on your budget, the UK suppliers support and access to spare parts which invariably you will need, usually the electronics and motors.

Unfortunately the last UK manufacturer of Manual Lathes ceased production a a year or so ago (Boxford). To give an example a Boxford 330 with a useful amount of accessories and tooling last cost upwards of £14K the Chinese copies of this lathe come fully kitted at around £4K. The brand names (Colchester & Harrison) as that's all they are now are manufactured out in Taiwan and are the same lathe with one or the other name on them. Engineering standards and quality are usually a lot higher with machines from Taiwan.

Thanks Martyn...

Tim, For my twopennyworth, I am intrinsically a Mini lathe fan. For that is what they are in many guises liveries and badges. There is ahuge amount of knowledge out there about these originally Russian designed machines.

I have recently just had to deal with a real dog bought new from a reputable supplier advertising on here as well, but had previously iwned one which did sterling service. Remember that over a periodthe real money gets spent on tooling and accessories not on the original machine.

I have never dealt with Amadeal as such but Warco, ARC, have always given excellent service with lots of support. Chester supplied the dog. However even that has been turned into a very tractable machine with patience and improving skills as we went along. I also have a Warco WM180 which is a fine machine straight out of the box. Amadeal do similar.

For information Dave Fenner's books on the mini lathe in The Workshop Practice Series are a fine start. Our own Neil Wyatts writings on the subject are good as well.

These machines will turn out good work. Just be aware of their limitations and accept whatever the badge they will require a little TLC to get the very best from them. There are many sources of information with exact detail to help you with that.

Ian.