Hello from Newburyish

Hi everyone,

Have just signed up to the forum as a bit of an anchor for all of the advice out there. As the default place to ask questions seems to be (to me anyway) Google - the responses take you all over the place and trying to get back to that place can be difficult!!

My history is modelmaking out of the box from an early age - mainly cars and military vehicles, with a few aeroplanes thrown in for good measure. This hobby diminished little as I got older and other things took priority. However, I returned to making cars and enjoyed detailing them with home made materials. I started with a Unimat/Emco lathe, and then moved on to a slightly larger Sieg CO from Axminster.

My job with completely disconnected with my hobby and love of Italian motors, until recently when a change of direction took me to the restoration and modification of 70/80s Lancias and Fiat X1/9s. Part of this work required fabrication of parts no longer avavilable off the shelf, or for things that had not been done before. The Sieg was woefully lacking for anything other than the smallest work on 1:1 cars, although still good for the modelmaking.

I have recently changed this for a lathe/mill combination from Clarke - the CL500M, which I got secondhand from the Bay of e. It came with some tooling for the lathe - a three jaw self centering chuck, an MT3 drill chuck for the mill and tail stock - unfortunately no fixed or moving steadies. There is very little in the way of milling tools, but I will expand on those as I learn that craft. It's all uptogether, but is a little rough and ready so the plan is to spend some time cleaning it up a bit and making a proper table for it to sit on - it doesn't currently have stand or suds tray.

I was also looking at the possibility of changing the motor to one that could be modified to accept a variable speed arrangement to avoid the need for belt changing on a regular basis, and even had a treadmill lying around that was waiting to be skipped. However, it's an old one and whilst the motor is in good condition, it has a capacitor soft start, and the speed variation was by way of a turning cable and pulley that split under pressure, thereby reducing the drive wheel and increasing the speed of the belt. It has now been stripped and 'recycled'. The tread belt has been cut and used as a bench surface cover, and the rest of the frame has been set aside for whatever other projects may come up. Not sure what to do with the motor now, but I'm sure that I'll find something to do with it!

I think that's probably enough of my drivel for now! I'm based just outside of Newbury, Berkshire. I love all things mechanical and the challenges of different projects, even if I don't have the time to do them.

Any advice you have from your experiences of the Cl500M would be appreciated - both the good and the bad!

Cheers

Darren

Hello Darren,

Welcome to the forum. There area few CL500M owners about here.

Most people say the lathe is OK, but the milling part isn't great.

Changing to a VFD & 3-phase motor for variable speed is usually reasonably straightforward for any lathe.

Neil

Thanks Neil,

That's ok as I'm sure that once I've got the basics, I'll probably look for a stadalone milling mahine, but space is a bit of a premium right now.

Cheers for the welcome.

Darren