Can the Sieg C0 lathe cut iron or steel?

Hi

Ive been looking at a micro lathe to buy and I'm taking a lot of interest in the Sieg C0. (Also known as Axminster C0) I intend to use it for making coal fired steam locomotives up to 3.5" gauge.

Is this lathe suitable for working in steel or iron? Also can a milling attachment be added to it?

Has anyone experience of using this make of lathe?

thanks

I think you will find the C0 too small for what you plan to do. It is similar size and capability to the Optimum 6x12 I had a play around with a while back (there's a thread somewhere). The Seig (and similar brands) C3 is a much more substantial machine and well worth the extra money. The C3 is popular with model engineers for a reason. It will happily cut steel, can do screw cutting, handle larger diameter jobs and heavier cuts. The little C0 is very limited. One chap on here has built a small Beng Laura Stirling engine on his c0-sized Optimum but it seemed to be stretching the machine to its limits, and that engine is waaay smaller than a 3.5" loco.

I am that chap...listen to Hopper ! The C0 is way too small. Buy the Sieg C2 or C3 (or their equivalent size in other brands) otherwise you will soon run into limitations as to what you can do on a smaller machine.

Edited By Brian John on 29/06/2016 08:13:34

I think you'll find the Sieg C0 to be the modern equivalent to the little lathe that some here laugh at, the nano lathe from the 1920/30s the "Super Adept", it will cut steel, slowly, and do a lot of things a larger lathe will do, only much smaller, perhaps be ok for 00 gauge if you want to build locos. Here is my Adept taking a .010" cut on a bit of stainless steel about 5/8" diameter. Ian S C

One big plus that might not be apparent to some on the C3 is the centre distance. The extra 100mm over some other machines does give more scope for drilling holes. An aspect people tend to forget. When lathes get down to 300mm centre distance and lower this can be much more of a problem.

The C2 has been mentioned. One retailer that a lot use on here ArcEuro have dropped that particular one as price wise the C3 makes more sense. General functionality does too.

While some one might think they don't need a lathe with a 500w or more motor variable speed raises it's head. As the speed is reduced the available power drops off. Some people on here that use larger lathes mostly run them on the low speed range because of this. Some have 2 speeds which are selected by changing the motor belt setting.

The other thing to appreciate is that there are a number of lathes around of similar size to the C3. Some go back to 300mm between centres. Some have screw cutting indicators. There are probably variations in the equipment they come with as well. The dealers that are usually mentioned are Arceuro, Warco, Amadeal, Axminster at times. Brian introduced Opti available in the UK from Excel in Coventry. Brian's C0 like machine had problems but some people seem to be pretty happy with their other models. Warco seem to be very popular on here especially for larger machines. Wonder when and if Ketan will offer the C8. There are also other retailers about. A number of them.

Vertical slides for milling are available for many lathes. These days it's seems to be a forgotten subject around here but can work rather well. A C3 is very likely to give you far more capacity for that than a C0. It's also possible to mount block like things on a face plate and that in fact is likely to give a better finish than can be achieved on smaller chinese millers.

Whoops forgot to mention Neil's machine which I think came from Machine Mart. He's done some rather extreme machining on his.

John

-

Edited By Ajohnw on 29/06/2016 10:32:53

Edited By Ajohnw on 29/06/2016 10:37:04