Should you really get the biggest lathe possible?

I often hear people say buy the biggest machine that you can possibly fit in your workshop and would like to put an opposing view. In my main workshop I have a number of machines, the largest lathe is a Dean Smith and Grace 13x30, the largest mill is a Bridgeport clone. I also have a bench in the spare room at my girlfriends house, this contains a C3 mini lathe and an X2 mill. 95% of what I make can be done on these two machines. Over the last couple of weeks I have had to do a number of jobs on a fairly tight time budget. I have found myself gravitating to the (warm and cosy) bench at my girlfriends. These jobs were so much easier on the smaller machines. Changing chucks on the DSG is a job that I have to brace myself for, even pulling the tailstock for drilling is not for weaklings ( I do use proper slideway oil and this helps).

Given that most posters on this forum are nearer 70 than 20, should this be taken into account when choosing machines.

Obviously when I need to remove large amounts of metal I head over to the workshop and wouldn't want to be without that facility but if I could only have one lathe and mill, I would have quite a dilema.

Any thoughts.

Regards David

Edited By David Colwill on 05/12/2014 08:33:49

That must be some girlfriend to allow a workshop in the spare room, what a lucky fellow you are. I have a Myford speed 10 lathe and a Myford VMB mill in my workshop and very rarely do I feel the need for anything larger. A lot depends on what is to be made, but a great many people do not need large equipment.I find a 6" rotary table quite heavy enough for me and I daresay many folk would agree.

Doug

The only downside I can see with a large lathe might be its low top spindle speed. Also perhaps the need to muck about with trying to get a 1/4" X 2" long tool rigged up in a tool post that was designed for 3/4" tools 4" long!

Frank.

I think it's a statement made with respect to hobby machines, industrial sized machines are rather over kill in a model engineering context, for the vast majority at least.

My Worco 12x 24 lathe and VMC mill have good capacity and would be considered large capacity machines so much so I do also have a Sherline lathe and mill for tiny work. In a model engineering context these are the 2 extremes.

Nigel

Edited By tractionengine42 on 05/12/2014 08:56:53

When I go to work in my local office I can go by bicycle. But that isn't very suitable for the office 40 miles away so I use an 850cc car. It would be nicer to use a bigger car but it wouldn't be better to use a 7 1/2 ton truck despite its advantages for accasional heary lifting. So there are limits and it is just a question of setting a sensible upper limit.

When people recommend a bigger lathe it is to go up from a 2 1/2 or lightweight 3 1/2 Myford to a more solid 5in like a Boxford or perhaps if and only if they are into big stuff to half ton Colchester. It is over the top to go up to a 2 ton DSG for the average modeller and then only if they also have a small lathe.

What you should be doing is insulate your workshop so you can heat that too.

It really depends on what you intend to use the lathe or milling m/c for, a mini lathe is not going to be suitable for a 7.25" loco or 3" traction engine but may well be suitable for a small stationary engine or even a 3.5" loco.

To follow the analogy above, a mini hatchback is not suitable for moving large items but a large estate car is and if they are really big then you may well need the lorry but the lorry and the estate car will take small items but may be over kill.

I can do small items on my AUD with a ER collet chuck and I am still able to swing a 10" item.

Bob

I should have pointed out that I use my workshop for earning a living. I can heat my workshop by the woodburning stove but that isn't as nice as a warm house. I take on the comments about cars, bycycles etc (which is why I also have a Smart and Brown 1024) but even swapping chucks on a Warco BH600 is a pain especially if you are doing it often. The reason that I raised this point is that the "buy the biggest lathe you can fit in" advice seems to be quite glibly trotted out and I felt that the disadvantages should discussed.

Regards David.

Mine has recently remodelled the kitchen in her house, rewired it and re-plumbed it all on her own to make room for a largish CNC mill and C3 lathe because the spare bedroom 'workshop' is full. The remodelling also consisted of cutting and welding a new bench out of 100 x 50 steel box section, all welded construction.

In all fairness though the bench was cut and welded at my place but without any help from me.

Forgot to add, these are all for her use, not mine, I never get to use them when staying over.

And that's all I'm saying............

Edited By John Stevenson on 05/12/2014 10:05:51

And yes she is some girlfriend!

It is not just a question of capacity. Larger machines are a lot more rigid than small ones. You do not have to go over the top as e.g. a Colchester Bantam has a footprint only a bit larger than a Super 7 but is a much better machine. An older Raglan or Little John are also good machines for the home workshop.

My first lathe was a Portass model "S" which was (still is) 3" x 12" or so and was easy to manhandle by a 15 year old (as I was at the time), so I was able to overhaul, modify, paint and mount it on a bench top myself. It gave me excellent service for quite a few years and I did all sorts of jobs on it, as is the true "model engineer way". The other candidate at the time was a massive (probably 7" centre height) Drummond with integrated drive. I always shudder when I think back to when I was on the verge of buying it as it would have been a mistake, lovely machine though it was.

As you and others say, it depends what you are expecting to be turning. My Bantam is sometimes not big enough for my needs but it's a lot better than an ML7 for my particular purposes. For others, a Myford is fine, if a little expensive perhaps. The other issue with going for a larger machine apart from sheer weight is the cost of accessories. If you double the centre height, you will be needing chucks etc that weigh something like 8 times as much (2 cubed) and the cost isn't going to be far behind, possibly higher as you are getting into professional territory.

One of the key considerations should be the availability (popularity) of compatible accessories. The great advantage of my Bridgeport clone milling machine is that the basic design seems to be common to the majority of medium sized machines and so there is a vast range of parts and accessories available. It may have been satisfying to preserve a "special" antique such as the large Drummond but it would have been very expensive and frustrating in the long run.

Of course, in the interests of science, the correct answer is to keep buying different sized machines to cover all the bases. And keep expanding your workshop to accommodate them as it would be sacrilege to sell any of them. That's certainly the way I see it!

Murray

There's no point in buying a Colchester if you are going to make watches or a Boley if you're going to build a 7.5 in loco. It must be horses for courses. The problem is often that beginners don't know what they are going to do. That's the first decision to be made when setting up a workshop and, perhaps, the most difficult.

Russell.

As the advice to buy as big as you can fit/afford is generally given to a beginner to then suggest that they would be better off with two lathes would involve them in more costs and having to find space for two rather than one lathe.

There is also the fact that two machines will require two sets of tooling as the spindle nose & tapers will unlikely be the same. If one of those machines is to be kept as a house lathe then you really want another set of small tools to go with that as you don't want to be going out to the workshop every 5 mins to get another drill bit, tap, measureing tool. So again not teh ideal advice to be giving a beginner.

On the other hand for someone who has been in the hobby for a while I can see the advantages of a small and large lathe & mill provided you want to spend that amount on equipment and have teh available space to house it. But by then they would know what they want out of the hobby and what size machines would allow them to do that.

Edited By JasonB on 05/12/2014 11:01:55

I have an 8 x 14" Lathe and it's been good so far for what I expected to do on it. It was also within my tight budget at the time. I really like the long bed Harrison M300 I used to use on occasion at work but I've read a couple of horror stories about accidents using full size machines like that so although I sometimes wish I had a larger lathe it's made me happier about the machine I have. If I put too much pressure on my machine the belt slips. And whilst it's still capable of causing injury I think it's far less likely to cause a serious one. There's a thread on one of the other forums about a serious accident that occurred when an operator reached over his (full size) machine whilst it was running to reach some tooling stored behind it. Not a good place to put Lathe tooling but it's surprising how many do.

When I first became interested in this malarkey, my initial requirement was for some small 00 gauge wheels. My lack of knowledge led me to buy a Unimat1 toy machining centre.

It didn't take long to realise my mistake so I bought a s/h Hobbymat - 21/2 in centre height.

This machine worked, but as time went on (and not much time at that), and my experience grew, I discovered firstly that it still wasn't big enough, and second, that facing was convex rather than concave.

I then bought a new Warco 220 (rebadged Mashstroy C210T). With a centre height of 110mm and dbc of 500mm, it is just about big enough: there have been times when either a gap or a larger centre height would have been advantageous, but I have managed, in one instance by cutting the bar in two, machining, and then welding back together. In another instance by allowing the tailstock to slightly overhang the end of the bed.

In all of these, the weight has gone up - the 220 weighs 125kg when fully assembled, and this was just about handleable by me when I moved house 19 years ago.

The 220 isn't perfect, but I am managing to do what I want with it so I can't see me changing it anytime soon.

However, based on the above experiences, I do think that either a gap bed lathe or one with a centre height of at least 5"/125mm would be better. Lengthwise, I can't see much more than 500mm being necessary, and in terms of weight, well it all depends on your facilities, but for a singleton worker, probably a maximum of 150kgs. provided one can remove various parts to lighten the machine whilst installing.

Of course, if you know that right from the start you are only going to build clocks, or 00 gauge stuff, then a small lathe may well be satisfactory, but for general amateur engineering I think the largest you can install/afford is still the best idea.

I have to say that I do sometimes wonder if an additional tiny lathe might indeed have some advantages especially for the small jobs that sometimes have to be done.

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

I only have one lathe, a Heidenreich and Harbeck 21R0, it has 230 above the saddle and 2 metres between centres. Not a small machine, I paid about the same price for it as I would have a second-hand Myford or similar bench lathe. It did need a lot of work to get it working accurately, as I really like machine building rather than model making, I enjoyed working on it.

The benefit of a larger machine is rigidity and the ability to take heavy cuts, you can really remove metal quickly. the bigger spindle bore in this case over 50mm makes workholding easier. I have not found sourcing tooling difficult. One inch square toolholders for carbide tips often turn up at markets from industry and are not expensive. I could change it to a quick change system however have found the 4 way turret adequate. I also have collected a set of Armstrong type tool holders for HSS tooling, and a Diamond tool holder that I find works well.

Bigger lathes often come with an extensive range of metric and imperial threads available via the quick change box. also an extensive range of feeds, however they often do not have a set of change gears for other threads outside the built in threads, you maybe able to get them from the manufacturer but they are expensive.

My lathe has speed range of 26 to 1250rpm Smaller lathes often have a higher top speed, handy if you are working on small shafts.

If you are sourcing one make sure the chucks are in good order. Mine came with two a sixteen inch BSA 4 jaw and a 14inch 3 jaw. Now I cant lift both of them unaided. For everyday use I have a new condition 7 inch 3 jaw and a 12 inch Bernard 4 jaw. the bigger chucks are only used occasionally I also have a 12 inch faceplate that I adapted. Make sure you get a fixed and travelling steady. .

Safety is an issue, Industrial Toolroom size lathes are often around 10 horsepower and gear driven. They don't stop until something breaks. A beginner should seek the help and instruction of an experienced person before using one. Don't let friends distract you while you are using it. it can seriously injure or even kill. (As can a bench lathe).

I really enjoy using this lathe, if you have the work for it and the space, bigger lathes are worth looking into.

Regards
John

Edited By John McNamara on 05/12/2014 14:55:39

John S, thats some girlfriend you have there as well !!!!. CNC mill in the kitchen, worlds first programmable cake icing machine

Bigger is better, but for modelmnaking (I am not a modelmaker, but I sometimes make small stuff!) I would say the biggest you wpuld ever need is the Colchester Student, beyond this the footprint is getting so big that you need much more space. I often put a smaller chuck in the student 3 jaw if I am working "small" ad of course men with lathes are often asked "can you lathe this down for me" Trying to do bigger work on a small machine can get a bit "hairy"!

One thing that never seems to come up is the influence the size of your machine has on what you do with it!

For most of us, it's a hobby - rarely do we find we MUST make a particular item, we choose to. Those who aren't sure what they may end up doing shouldn't fret too much, as whatever size of machine they get, there is still an infinity of potential projects to be done on it.

I keep wondering about something bigger than my mini-lathe, but the only thing I'd be likely to want to turn that's too big for it would be an 8" flywheel. The mill or a temporary raising bloc would see that sorted.

Neil

Very well put Neil.