Lathes..Which One??

[denis M]

If its any help I know where there are 2 Myford lathes, both in good nick that have just been sold to a dealer, a member of our society, in the Oxford area.
One is a ML 7 the other a ML10 (I think) all with bits and pieces on.

[ChrisCrosskey]

I bought an ML7 when I started out and whilst it is not perfect it is about as good a lathe as you can get for model engineering for a varie4ty of reasons.....

It's very popular, OK that means that desireable second-hand bits of tooling (taper turning attachments, gearboxes, dividing heads etc) make silly money on ebay, at least there is a strong aftermarket service from both Myfords and third-parties.... A case in point would be RDG who seem to be working their way through the Myford catalogue with the aid of their Indian based factory... At least you won't be left scrambling around leaving "Want" lists with all the S/H tool dealers (alerting them to what they can load an extra 50% onto)

2: Snobbishness/recognition amongst ME's.... The first is not a huge problem generally but you will run across people who will denigrate your choice and sometimes they are people who are useful to have advice from (not often but it does happen).... the recognition bit is far more common, it generaly goes : You have a problem, you ask around, if you have a Myford then half the people you ask will have had that problem or seen it or know someone who had it (or something applicably similar) and you will probably end up with four or five practicable ways of dealing with it.... If you don't have a Myford then their reaction will be "ooh no..... don't know enough about that sort of lathe to advise you....."

Me personally.... If you've got the space then a Boxford AUD is probably about the ultimate British ME lathe, but you'll need to get a kit from soméone to build as big vertical slide for it and make sure you get plenty of tooling as it's rather harder to find bits for, especially the slotted cross-slide, otherwise Myfords are great ME lathes. That said though, I've a friend with a Warco BH6000 (?BH600?) and he loves it to bits, it's got almost the capacity of the Harrisons and Colchesters at college in a footprint barely bigger than an ML7, but he's already run across both the snobbishness and recognition problems in less than 6 months..... that said each time I see him at evening class he seems to have got a lot done on his loco so the Warco machine is obviously up to some serious work, there's things he's shown me that took him an evening that would take me all weekend on the Myford......

chrisc

[chris vine]

Hi Chris,

I have a chum with a Boxford AUD and I would not swap my Myford S7 with him for all the tea in China. It does not have a high enough top speed for our uses and it is very poor on feel on the slides. Perhaps it is just a bad one, but it is in A1 condition.....

As for people being snobby (snotty) about which lathe you have, just ask to look at what they produce on it......

Chris.

[steamjohn248]

Has anyone looked at my post titled English Lathes? perhaps I should have put it on this one they seem like bargains to me if they are any good

Steamjohn

[Noddy]

The buy cheap and buy twice has a bitterly familliar ring to it. The first lathe I got was an ancient british made thing, and with hind sight it belonged on the scrap heap.

The feed screws were worn to buggery, the lead screw turned out to be bent and rocked the saddle and the bed was so badly worn that if the gib was adjusted to give adequate tension at the head end, it would only run about 4 inches towards the tailstock end before it stuck.

I can only second the suggestion that if you buy second hand, take someone who genuinely knows what they are looking at along. (for example someone who turns out a lot of models or a tool maker...)

I ended up by chance with a virtually un worn ML7 for the same price (two owners before me, some scumbag had bought it for five pounds from a widow, there is some low life out there). Trouble is it is on the other side of the equator to me now, so I'm looking for something lighter to carry with me.

Can't comment on the warco stuff, but at least it has a warranty, and some imported stuff like the east german maximats seem to be going up in price with time.

happy modelling.