Hello from sunny Northumberland.

A nice sunny day here in Northumberland and a new workshop to kit out so life is good.

Ive been out of engineering for around 15yrs after losing my workshop and all its contents due to a relationship breakdown. Now I've rented a new place, I have some money in the bank and things are starting over again.

Sadly back then I had good gear and Im shocked at just how much prices seem to have risen for often very tired old stuff now. I bought myself an almost new Warco GH1330 after looking at far too many tired old Harrisons and Colchesters, so far Im quite impressed with the machine once I set it up properly.

Ive also just picked up a clean Myford VMF but as yet I need to source tooling so can't say what this machine performs like, I expect it will be good enough for my needs though.

Its quite a daunting task when you look at everything I used to have and what it would cost to replace it all but Ive got to start somewhere so here I am

Good luck mate

Im actually slightly envious of that lathe, welcome to MEW forums.

Michael W

Alan: Welcome to the forum. It's sunny down south today too! I'm a regular visitor to Northumberland around Wooler. I fly with the Borders gliding club at Milfield from whence we can hill soar Cheviot.

Andrew

Welcome Alan,

I can relate with you on the relationship score, many moons ago, like you, picked my self up & started again.

George

Welcome Alan,

Good choice of lathe, I've had a GH1330 for several years now, it's been good to me so far. I changed the motor recently for a 3 phase/inverter setup, a worthwhile conversion in my opinion.

I've also added a mod to the tailstock to allow lever feed original concept was designed by John Stevenson of this forum), I've found this a very useful addition. There are some pictures of this in my albums

One thing I did find was that although Warco state the spindle bore is 38mm, there was a constriction part way down the bore which meant I could only get about 36mm bar right through. I line bored the spindle with a a specially made boring bar to overcome this.

I'm working on a couple of other mods for the lathe, to add a spindle drive clutch and a modification to the forward/reverse mechanism to allow single point pickup/reverse for screwcutting when the half nuts have to be left engaged, this will also allow feed to be stopped and reversed without first powering off.

Welcome to the forum, Alan.

Neil

Bonjour et bienvenu from the not so sunny South of France today.

Russell;

Thanks for the warm welcome guys.