Sieg C0 Micro Lathe

Santa was good enough to leave an Axminster Sieg C0 lathe under the tree for me this year.

Having just returned from a work visit to China, I took the new machine ( still in its packaging ) out to the workshop. I cleaned off the transport grease to find the ground faces of the bed and crosslide badly stained - not sure what with, looks like it came out of the grease.

Another of our excellent machine and tool suppliers suggests that machines should be stripped down, cleaned and adjusted before use, so, armed with my Allen keys I waded in. The first thing I noticed were the burrs on all the edges of all the machined faces - all around the crosslide and saddle. I carefully de-burred everything, finalised my cleaning and started re-assembling the crosslide. When sliding the crosslide along its ways, there is a tremendous tight spot in the mid-travel area - measured across some dowel pins, this amounts to 0.05mm - I can't see anything obvious, so I suspect just poor machining. The gib strip looks like it has been chopped out of sheet steel with a cold chisel - it must be at least 0.5mm out of flat end-to-end and it's only 50mm long !

I also had a quick look at the motor to spindle vee belt and pulleys - the edges of the vee belt are already shreaded and the belt doesn't sit flat in the vee. I laid a steel rule across the face of the pulleys to find that the motor pulley wobbles about 2mm and the spindle pulley about 1mm and additionally that the pulleys are about 3 -4mm out of alignment ( very difficult to check accurately with the wobble in the pulleys ).

That's enough for me, Santa having spent about £300 on the machine - it will have to go back !

Anyone else had this sort of problems with similar machines ?

Just spent half an hour looking at the Cowell's 90ME - in a different class by the look of it - but at a very different price.

Do you think you could rectify all the faults for £2786.40 ?

I got a nice old cowells for 250 quid including post a couple of years ago from a well known site

Small lathes tend not to be used very heavily, unlike the 3.5 inch workhorses, and it can be worthwhile to be patient and wait for one to pop up

Whilst I am quite prepared to admit that all the faults could be rectified for £2786.40, this is irrelevant. The additional 'features' could have quite simply never been included - I never supply equipment to my customers in such a state whatever price the customer pays.

As a teenager, I started building a Tich and proudly presented some parts to a friend of my fathers ( time served toolroom turner ) who immediately commented "take those bloody burrs off"!

So, having been through a 5 year apprenticeship at Colchester Lathes, I have applied the teachings of the instructors ever since, making sure that precision is ensured at each stage of manufacture.

OK so by your reasoning Cowells should be able to sell for £300 ?

Long short is you get what you pay for and QC on a small machine takes as much time, if not more than on a larger one. In fact it's probably level over the range to a point.

At some point going down the price scale it's not possible to do a reasonable job of QC and reach the target price.

The mini lathe whilst costing just a bit more has far less inherent problems because it's just that bit further up the scale.

My first reaction was to wonder if Axminster would accept back a machine that you have "worked on" Bob - even though I'm sure your efforts have been beneficial.

All my main machines are "old iron" - mainly because that was all I could afford at the time and also because I also like working on them. These were all good quality machines in their time and are fundamentally well built. I am not therefore trying to 'install' quality into them but simply restore it (a little easier I believe).

Having said that, I have small vices, compound tables and other tooling of Far Eastern origin that I have either accepted "for what they are" (and work within their limits) or have (in some cases) treated as just a source of low cost castings which need to be (re)machined.

My other (main) machines are mostly the same age as I am and therefore (like me) cannot always do exactly what they did in their youth but then I don't work for a living any more and neither do they. We are therefore all enjoying our retirement.

So - my understanding is that the larger (mid-range) Chinese lathes are now pretty good (but getting more expensive) so I think you will either have to go ''up range" a bit (and spend more) or buy a decent small (used) machine and give it a bit of love and affection. My EW is a little larger than the Sieg C0 I think but cost less than £300 and came fully equipped (S/c & back gears, boring table, 3-4 jaw chucks, drill chuck, faceplate, centres, vertical slide etc.) - it also started out being reasonably well made.

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 20/01/2014 11:14:36

Edited By IanT on 20/01/2014 11:19:22

I am pleased to see that I can continue to look forward to your Out From Left Field thoughts Jason Micro Drive springs to mind.

Anyhow, I have a Taig that I use and the quality is certainly up there in my opinion, marketed in the UK as a Peatol (God knows why) it is an American Machine. It makes small precision items remarkably well, a constant surprise to me considering I am usually steering it. Can be bought second hand at very reasonable cost.

Downside - no screwcutting.

graham.

In the 1930s the equivalent of a C0 was one of these: http://www.lathes.co.uk/adept/index.html

In a 1940s ME a contributor documented their improvements to an 'un-named lathe' that was probably an Adept and they went a bit further than what would be required for your C0.

Salaries have increased by almost exactly 200 times since 1930 so the affordability of the current equivalent of 12/6 would be £125. I would guess you could make and market the Adept at £125, but i don't think many people would buy it as it is far cruder than the C0.

On the other hand we replaced our TV with an32" HD one for under £150... like HDDs, the difference is in the level of demand - volume of sales has far more impact on price than material costs.

Neil

This afternoon, I popped in to Axminster ( local Nuneaton branch ), had a fiddle with the display machines and discussed my machine with their after-sales specialist. He agreed to swap out the machine, but he will check over their boxed / stock machine first then give me a ring.

No less that I expected really - I'll keep you posted.

Good to hear..

hope you reach happy conclusion