Clarke lathe

Was looking through some posts,and in some pictures of members workshops,l think it was allen bs shop he had a clark lathe has any others got one and what are they like please,thanks

john

Clarke have marketed two or three different models....which one do you refer to?

( personally I wouldnt waste my hard earned....)

I was thinking along the lines of the lathe an mill combo,my old / old myford has seen its best now and health willing was thinking of a change this year,but do not want another myford,dam silly prices for parts.

I have a Clarke CL430 & the Warco equivalent of the Clarke CL500M (a WMT300-1).

What are they like? The fact I have 2 should tell you I'm not dis-satisfied. There are one or two little irritations, in that the carriage nut is fixed, not a half nut that can be dis-engaged. Changing screw cutting gear is fiddly, slow & irritating, needing about six hands in the space for one and a half. Changing belt for spindle speed is no worse now than it was 50 years ago. A VFD might be better, but a lot of work can usually be done at the same speed. I don't like to have a 5" chuck spinning at 1600rpm, it scares me. Tend to run the lathe at 950rpm or below, which seems to work nicely on what I do.

The Clarke can't cut LH threads as supplied. The Warco has a different gear spider and can cut LH threads. At some point I mean to extract the Warco's spider & draw it up for anyone who wants to make something similar for a Clarke.

The milling head on the CL500 is way too flexible to be any real use. Cutting spanner flats on a round bar leads to mashed cutters. Face milling & end milling into vertical edges is OK, but if there is too much force, you'll move the milling head as the locks for it are only clamps, not pins. It's why I have a shaper, so that can do the work the milling head can't cope with. I'd advise that the milling head is not worth the extra to have - do milling with a vertical slide from a collet chuck in the spindle. Much stiffer & better. The time taken to remove the lathe toolpost & compound slide, remove the lathe chuck, fit a spacer block & vice, move the milling head round, lock it down as well as possible,  is on the wrong side of 30 mins and heading towards 45 minutes. The reverse takes as long. This is a significant disincentive to use the milling head. Finally, while milling across the lathe bed, you have to remember the graduations are double the actual movement, as the cross slide graduations are for diameter when being used as a lathe, while the axis along the lathe bed is a direct reading.

They are sturdy, not top quality, but good enough for virtually every job. I am a professional engineer & feel that in a lot of the model engineering shown here, excessive precision is used on parts that don't need it. Produces a lovely decorative result and a finish to die for, but not necessary to get the engineering to work. The Clarke/Warco machine permits adequate precision where it is needed, but it's possibly a bit more difficult to get high precision than with something like a Myford. Having said that, precision of 0.05mm on diameter is easy to achieve, and down to 0.01mm is possible without the compound slide coming into play. Any better than that, then you'll have to watch your tool & work heating as well as use the compound slide on most machines anyway.

One final thing, our full time machinist at work was seriously considering one for home use having tried my Warco. In the end he didn't get it as the spindle bore is 26mm, and he wanted to put in his 40mm diameter motorcycle front forks for re-machining after he mashes them on the speedway track he races on.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Richard.

Edited By richardandtracy on 23/02/2017 09:02:39

I had the C500 some years ago as the 'first ' lathe / mill choice before they fitted the NVR switch to later models.I can concur with Richard's post above re the milling aspects, not a rigid enough setup for any serious milling, quite adequate for use as a drill though. Usually I had the milling head swung out of the way in line axially, for better balance reasons. Will do most 'general ' work satisfactorily so a reasonable 'starter' machine if funding is tight.

​George.

I also own a CL500M, I bought it cheap off a company I used to work for who had bought for a job it wasnt man enough for but suits me perfectly, I've never used the mill because I have two small mills that do the work. I dont do model engineering but I restore and show petrol stationary engines which need a little bit of precision and the lathe is more than capable. I agree with points regarding speed changing and I have a VFD and now looking for a motor.

One thing I have done is to fit longer gib screws so that I can fit lock nuts to lock the gib screws as I found my screws would go slack allowing play in the slideways.

Martin P

I found that by bolting the stand down to the floor it becomes rigid enough for the lathe and I am more than happy with the lathes accuracy particularly after I set the tailstock adjustment with my ground test bar between centres.

I have found clarke's help line very useful when asking for parts for a friends lathe, I recently wanted to know the shaft dia of the electric motor and almost by return the answer came back with the info required.

Martin P

As Clarke machines are 'similar' to others on the market, look on Arc website for spare parts. My CMD10 has virtually everything the same as the SX1, and as Arc carry most spares in stock, well worth a try.

I've never had a need for spares, so cannot really comment. It is likely the Clarke will become unusable before the Myford's run out of spares. With cheaper machines the scrappage threshold is much lower because it's simply cheaper to replace than go through the faff you'd feel obliged to go through to save more expensive machines. However with normal usage that will be in 20-30 years or maybe more in a home workshop. By this time the machine will have more than paid for itself.

I've had my Warco 15 years, and made literally hundreds of pens on it. I'm not entirely sure how many I have made, but pen number 267 was the point at which I realised I was getting so few back there was little point in keeping records of how they were made and spare blanks & parts, and all I was doing was wasting time & money. Each pen takes around 3 hours on the lathe. I have also made around 500 resin finials for a Kaigelu 316 fountain pen at 15 mins each. That's a fair amount of machining time on those bits, and I have made a lot of other stuff too (just in fewer quantities), so the fact it looks virtually new and has never needed spares is re-assuring. The machine was new when I got it, and set up by Warco to provide adequate accuracy from day 1.

I think Allan B's contribution reinforces my point that adequate accuracy can be obtained, but it's not as easy to get as with a good Myford. How often do you really need better than 0.01mm? Better than 0.01mm comes in the 'It'd be nice' bracket for most home engineering. And if it does not, then maybe the design needs to be reconsidered to obviate the need for such precision.

Having seen my newish Clarke 430 with the NVR switch, I think it must be better built than Allan B's one. I have no taper I can measure over 100mm. In another field have noticed that Chinese fountain pens made in the last year or two are vastly better made than they were 10 years ago, with the modern Chinese fountain pens being indistinguishable from their Western counterparts costing 5-10x more in terms of quality & finish, loosing out only a little in design quality terms. I suspect the same may be the case with their lathes. Given the very small sample size I have, I cannot draw firm conclusions, but the little evidence I have points generally in that direction.

Regards,

Richard.