New guy

New guy here; been shopping for a hobby lathe, keep coming across your forum in the searches, and figured I'd join up.

I used to be a experimental physicist in a past career; presently computer nerd (living in Lisboa), and miss working with objects constructed of matter. We had a beautiful old Hardinge and Bridgeport in the lab's machine shop back when I was writing my thesis. I only made simple shapes and jigs, but always got a lot of satisfaction out of seeing my bits of metal in vacuum chambers and spectrometers making things go.

Definitely a model engine in my future, and maybe a clock if I get real ambitious, but who knows how long it will take to get up to speed and tooled up. More short term is making widgets out of aluminum and brass for electrostatic generators.

Was thinking about Cowells stuff, but as I had a Unimat-3 back in the US, I think I'd rather something a bit beefier, and more locally supported (who knows with Brexit). Proxxon PD400 is kinda more in the ballpark; nice spindle bore, but it seems pretty much same thing as Optimum TU2004v, which is cheaper and which is sold down the street from my house, where I can threaten the proprietor with a bacalhau or whatever the locals use in such circumstances.

I expect I'll ask a lot of dumb questions; hopefully you guys give me some good natured ribbing like I got from Charlie and Wayne-O back in lab machine shop days.

Hello Morse and welcome to this wonderful forum. Sounds like you have lead an interesting work life, I'm presuming now retired?

I wouldn't consider myself to be a clockmaker but I have built an English Regulator to a design by John Wilding.

All the best with your quest to find the ideal lathe.

Brian

Hello and welcome to the forum

H

If yo look just at the top of the thread there is a link called 'Latest posts'. It is actually a list of all the posts not just recent ones in time order. You can use that to go back to say january this year and look at all the threads that have been started about choosing lathes. They often have odd tiltes - like this one - so read every single oe and you will learn a lot about what is favailable and what the problems can be.

Welcome along, enjoy the machinery when it arrives.

Welcome!

An interesting career!

Lots of help available on here if you feel the need.

Have no experience of the Optimum, but search back in the Forum for Brian John's experience of his. As a newbie, he may have made some of his problems, but his experience, down under, was unlike any of mine with new machines.

In UK we are fortunate to have several importers, and folk seem to have fewer problems with the machines that they sell.

generally, having four different far eastern machines, have not been too disappointed. Yes there have ben a few problems, but none that cannot be overcome with care and adjustment.

One model of machine did have to be returned twice, before choosing a different version that worked well for years, before having a fairly easily overcome problem.

We are in a cost sensitive, and therefore more variable quality, area of the market.

Maybe, you should pursue seeking experiences of any machine, and the after sales back up provided by the importer, before purchasing.

Good luck

Howard

Thanks for the welcome and good advice guys. Not quite retired yet, got a few more years of work in me, but doing stuff that gets me away from the computer is super important to my sanity.

I'd just as soon a Warco WM180, but they don't seem to be sold in stores around here in Portugal, where Optimum are. Well, at least they're listed on the websites. The local fellow says he has to order from the factory. I guess they're all made in the same place, as Warco is out of stock also.

Anyway lots of juicy reading here; I'm sure somebody will sell me something eventually!