New chinese lathe or old Myford lathe

Not this old chesnut again!!!! Agreed the far eastern offerings are not the best quality but you get a lot of capable lathe for your money, after 45 years I've swapped from a super 7 to a Warco 290V, the Myford was well made but limited capability, the Warco is as rough as a badgers a*** in places but seems to do the job. I would love to buy a decent sized British made new lathe for £3.3 k but at the moment they 'are out of stock'

Tony

Hi, I find my myford super 7 a bit small so went on the hunt for a larger machine. Looked at a few warco types, they are eye candy for sure, but for the money they ask, I would want a lot more then Chinese manufacturing. In the end I went for a Colchester bantam lathe. Best Buy I have ever made in model engineering. A 1/4 of the price of a warco lathe, and ten times better.

Perfectly understandable given your disappointments. But don't run away with the idea that a second-hand Myford will automatically bring instant sunshine. Problem is, when buying second-hand, condition is everything!

So, forget about who made the lathe and where. Instead concentrate on the state of the particular machine on offer. Although many Myford's have been lightly used by loving owners and are in excellent condition, it's far from guaranteed. Some have been thrashed, dropped, worn-out, badly stored, or rebuilt by clowns! It's possible to spend big money on scrap.

Experience gained with those unsatisfactory Chinese Lathes may be very useful - you now know how to spot a wrong 'un. Things I'd look out for on a Myford:

• Chuck jammed on spindle
• Broken gears (missing teeth) due to ill-advised previous attempts to unstick a jammed chuck
• Worn bed, especially at the headstock end
• Worn bearings
• Damaged bearings due to grease nipples being greased rather than oiled as per Instructions. (The lathe has a total loss lube system were frequently topped up oil flows slowly through the bearings. Bad things happen if an oil-way gets blocked.)
• Damaged Dewhurst Switch (these are often misused to stop and start the lathe)
• Motor problems (Capacitors and Centrifugal switch), or antique electrics need replacing
• Depending on model, gearbox, clutch and power-traverse working properly
• All change gears & other accessories present and correct

Many second-hand flaws such as worn half-nuts are cheaply fixed. Others are expensive enough to break your heart, especially if you can't do the work yourself. It will seriously hurt your wallet if the lathe needs a new motor, electrics, bed re-grind, bearings, and a new chuck. And then turns out to have a worn lead-screw.

The purchase could be de-risked by buying a fully refurbished lathe from the present Myford company. Today their asking price for a basic Super 7 is £2495 + VAT and Shipping. The more fully featured cross-power feed version is £5,349 + VAT.

If buying second-hand, there are arguably better lathes than Myford to be had for less money. Well worth a look. Ask what the forum think about Myford alternatives.

Dave

Many second-hand flaws such as worn half-nuts are cheaply fixed.

Have you got a source of cheap Super 7 half nuts, Dave ?

"New Myford" don't show any at the moment & their ML7 half nuts are £65 a pair.

Nigel B.

No of course not Nigel! Wish I did.

I was thinking of half-nuts in comparison with fixing a poorly Quick Change gearbox, where a new input shaft & housing costs £228, lots of other parts might be needed, and it's more work than changing a mere half-nut. I'm not against buying second-hand, or older machines, just advising newcomers to watch out for expensive faults where it might be better to walk away.

Dave

Anyone buying a used 7-series lathe might be well-advised to buy the next and last few issues of MEW which feature articles by Peter Barker on testing for and rectifying faults caused by wear.

Neil

Buying any second hand machine, no matter what it's place of manufacture, carries the risk that it might be damaged or worn. In some cases, this can be verging on "beyond economic repair".

If you are a newbie, don't imagine that you can take on a "basket case" and turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. You could may even make matters worse, if you lack the knowledge and skill!

At least with a new machine there is the opportunity to reject or have it repaired,

The watchword at all times has to be "Caveat Emptor"

If you are not sure about the condition of the machine, have it examined by someone who is more knowledgeable, and impartial.

Howard

+1 for this.

I bought a well-regarded Chinese machine, paying nearly twice what I'd paid for the Myford Speed 10 it replaced, but less than half of the typical price of a fully equipped Super 7 in excellent condition. It's delivered 4 years' very good service.

It seems a lot go for the Chinese machines & from reading what people have done to them. It would seem with a little fettle here & there they are a good machine. Plus side is you will have a new lathe unmolested. I am not biased towards the Chinese lathes as I have a Super7. Also a lot of the new Chinese machines are coming with brushless dc drive motors which are pretty good.

Steve.

My Chinese mini lathe performs like its had 20 years hard use straight out of the box.

My 1970s Boxford AUD performs like it was made yesterday.

Let that sink in to your mind while you deliberate 🤔

OO nasty. I was trying so hard to be nice.

Steve.

That is what seems to get forgotten in this old chestnut: there are other choices. Over there in the UK you are spoiled for choice of secondhand machines that next size or two up from a Myford. EG Boxfords and Raglans. Not as big as the Colchester but bigger and better than a Myford and half or one third the cost, ironically. And still small enough for one man and a boy to finagle into the back of a hatchback car and transport home with a bit of minor disassembly.That's what I'd be going for if I lived over there.

But of course you have to know what you are looking at before you buy secondhand. It's on par with buying a 30 year old used car.

The thing with the UK is. The engineering industry collapsed in the late 70's early 80's. This left thousands of milling machines + lathes & many more engineering machines on the scrap heap. You could buy these machines for the price of scrap cast iron.

Some companies just gave them away. I have many friends with such machines. Some weighing a few tons. Then came the, what I call the German impulse. I may get shot for this but Germany even though the underdog for obvious reasons seemed to rule the west. I mean that in that they brought in various scales of safety. Things like the strength of a car seatbelts & the crash testing to destruction of a car body .

The West took this on board & it became a standard that everyone adopted. Move on some years & now we have various Schools & colleges that have training engineering courses for young students. The problem expanded to that, you cannot do that as it is not safe. So it went on to a point where many institutions could not sustain the courses. End of civilisation as we know it.

So all those engineering machines were sold off. It was not just the machines, but all the tooling too. Which in some cases was more money than the machines were. On top of that all the students would never find a job at the end of the course , because there is no engineering skills jobs in the Uk any more.

So it was either go & live in an Asian country where the wages are a pot of rice or move to guess where. Italy or GERMANY. As an example of how cheap you could buy machiney. I have a friend called Daryl. He restores old BSA motorcycles & was looking for some machines for his workshop. He went to look at a milling machine. Not sure of the make, it weighed over a ton. When he got there he asked how much they wanted for it. They told him if you buy the milling cutters & all the gear in that box you can have the milling machine for free. He gingerly asked ,so how much is the stuff in the box. £25. That was 30years ago. Still going strong.

The Colchester lathe he has is a similar story. Great British engineering. Gone forever. Same as steel & much more. Sorry I know I rant.

Steve.

​​​​​​New Chinese lathe or old Myford lathe.?

Or even old (24yrs) Chinese lathe.. ​​​​​​​​​

7

Edited By Ron Laden on 13/03/2020 05:07:42

Edited By Ron Laden on 13/03/2020 05:46:05

A few years ago the company I work for decided to set up a small satellite workshop, to avoid travel back to the main buildings when machining jobs have to be carried out. when asked I specified a used Colchester student and a Bridgeport were the things to buy.

However against all my protestations and forecasts of doom they refused to buy used machinery and bought a Warco lathe which I think is a GH1322 and a Warco Bridgeport clone mill. Four or five years on and having used both quite intensively, probably 10 -15 hours a week on each machine, lots of screwcutting, often stretching the capacity to it's limit, and usually with someone continually asking how long am I going to be. I can say that I have been more than impressed with both machines, they are accurate and very convenient to use and show no signs of any premature wear or distress.

The Colchester's we have are obviously better finished, but it must be borne in mind that the cost when originally purchased was huge, far out of the range of most home workshop owners. If my Colchester Bantam ( which I love) at home was to disappear overnight I would definitely consider something like the Warco as a replacement.

Just my thoughts as a ( initially reluctant) user

Dave

Yes we forget that the Chinese machinery is not a brand new thing. Some getting on now, and still going well apparently. Here in Oz there are quite a few Taiwanese made lathes from the 1980s-90s still doing a good job. Back in the day they were "Taiwan trash" but seem to have stood the test of time. And new Taiwanese lathes sell at premium price, being regarded as the quality stuff these days.

What do you want to make on the lathe?

When you have decided that buy a lathe and spend your time making your project.

Yes if you are buying secondhand you need to consider price capability and condition and you may need help from an expert to do this, buying new you also need to be able to trust your supplier will give you the service you require - but wasting too much time dithering is wasting model engineering time!

A new ML7 cost about 7 weeks wages of a craftsman when introduced - and that was without chucks, steadies or motor. A major purchase - but unless you are spending more than the equivalent today (£4K? £5K, all tooled up) you are hardly likely to throw more money away, whatever your choice.

Except British engineering moved on, rather than collapsed. Although Britain peaked as 'workshop of the world', about 1890, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, France and others had joined early in the 19th century. USA, Russia and Japan later but British engineers were competing with many different countries, most of them clever.

Although Victorian engineers were 'can-do'. 20th century British manufacturing was often reluctant to adopt new ideas. Too much, 'we invented it, job done'. Johnny Foreigner's cheap goods must be low quality. Customers didn't agree!

Geography also forces change. Sheffield once had good iron-ore, coking coal and water. Being inland was a problem but canals and railways helped. However, hard to profit making cheap steel in Sheffield, so they moved up to superior steels and finished products made from it. Worked well until local coal and iron ore ran out. Sheffield struggled on with the heavy cost of transporting raw materials to the City but engineering success withered. Many other examples. When any business is unsuccessful the important thing is to move on, not to mourn it.

Got an excellent old book on how to make money from lathes. After 1900 machine tools changed rapidly. HSS meant rigid powerful machines, electric motors were replacing line-belts, and various forms of automatic were appearing. In the UK all innovations were attacked as inferior.

Book critical of British lathe makers because the USA was leaping ahead. British makers made to order and delivered about a year later. In a fast moving market, the delay cost customers big money. British lathes were made to last about 60 years, but were simple. It was assumed labour to work them would always be cheap. They cost more than modern US lathes available off-the-shelf for quick installation.

US lathes were criticised in the UK as being flimsy, but the book explains that doesn't matter. A tool only has to pay for itself and make a predictable profit within a known time. Second, it was clear factories using manual lathes were becoming uneconomic. Third, customer needs changed - manual lathes weren't a good way of mass-producing 20th Century components. Fourth, it was obvious to forward thinkers there were many opportunities to further automate machine tools, and it would thus be possible to reduce the number of expensive skilled men on the payroll.

Further, not smart to expect a machine tool to stay competitive for more than 5 to 10 years. Buying lathes to last 60 years is unwise. A factory with skilled men making Carburettors on manual lathes will lose out to a factory making the same carburettor with semi-skilled men on semi-automatics. They in turn will be bankrupted by carburettors made by unskilled men and automatic machines. Rapid change in methods and costs led to the apparent collapse in the 1980s when industry were forced to dump uncompetitive methods. I don't believe the change was managed well, but it had to happen.

Today, engineering is deep into CAD/CAM, and 'our' sort of engineering is a niche. True it's important for prototyping & ad-hoc requirements etc, but what Model Engineer's do isn't mainstream. Technical Colleges don't teach machining because Industry has little need for those methods.

Plenty of machining still going on in the UK, but it's moved on to CNC and especially Machine Centres and Work Centres. In a Work Centre jobs move automatically through a group of Machine Centres. These have many axes, and are almost entirely automated. Myford, bless 'em, were never in this market.

Most Machines Centres are far too big for a home workshop, but this might do.

The Star SW20 has 11-axes of which 3 can cut at the same time. Weighs 7100lbs and can drill, tap, turn and mill. The main spindle and sub-spindle are driven at up to 10000 rpm by a 5HP motor. Front tool carrier has 4 turning tools & 3 rotary. Rear tool carrier has 6 turning tools & 3 rotary. The Back-working tool-carrier holds 8 turning tools and 4 rotary tools. All three carriers have 1.6HP at 8000rpm.

Most of the skill is at the design stage, not at the machine. The tool is operated remotely or from the console pictured. No-one cuts metal by hand or sharpens HSS!

These things are fairly useless in a home workshop. My Chinese Lathe & Mill are far more fun. But for manufacturing, the day of the manual machine, however well-made is over. Difficult to make a living out of them.

British Industry is performing financially as well as it ever did. Different, not gone. Through rose-tinted glasses I regret it, but who would want to do 80 hour weeks in a Victorian factory?

Dave

The needs of mass production Industry and Hobbies are vastly different.

The modern hobbyist can use the industrial machine design from seventy years ago. Sixty years ago,in industry, the bar feed automatic was overtaking the capstan lathe.

About thirty years ago, we visited a foundry in Spain. The designer was using CAD. When the design was finished, he clicked on an icon, and somewhere in the foundry a machine started machining the die.

Industry has moved on.

Manual machine tools are still used in Industry, but in Toolrooms and Prototype shops, for one offs; which is what we hobbyists do most of the time.

Our modern machines are designed and manufactured using computerised techniques. If they weren't, we would not be able to afford manually machined and hand finished machines. Think of anything that you make in your workshop, and cost the time at, say, £50 an hour, (Which is what Industry needs to cover Material, Labour and Overheads ) Suddenly that little fixture, or Traction Engine wheel, begins to look pretty expensive!

We make things for fun, not for profit, as a living, so our needs are quite different.

A relatively cheap hobby machine can be fine tuned and improved in detail (We have all done ). The cost to us is time and some material. On a commercial basis, the cost would probably be prohibitive.

A badly made, assembled and adjusted new machine is just as much expensive rubbish as a worn forty or fifty year old "quality" machine. Neither will be fit for purpose without a lot of input of money, parts and time.

Choose carefully!

Howard