From: muratlanne@gmail.com   
      
   "Richard Smith"  wrote in message news:m134iif6sy.fsf@void.com...   
      
   I'd like to have a lathe again for sure.   
      
   When I was a youth I had no connection to anyone familiar or who could   
   mentor me.   
   Now I have been involved in a lot of commercial manufacturing operations   
   and done a fair amount of machining.   
   With landing-down here, might soon come time to look at this - getting   
   some machine tools.   
   -------------------------------------   
   Since cost normally scales up with capacity it would help to note what you   
   would do with it. I learned foundry practice by age 5, had been making   
   gadgets on wood shop machines since I was 8 and ran industrial machinery   
   during high school, so I had a pretty good idea of what I would buy when   
   available.   
      
   My lathe turns up to  5" center height, 10" diameter to the left of the   
   carriage. It's fine for delicate instrument work, adequate for making and   
   repairing tools and outdoor equipment to at least 6HP, but it can't turn my   
   brake drums or rotors. Replacements for them are cheap enough to not justify   
   a larger lathe. It was nice for designing - while - machining a prototype or   
   one-time custom job but would be uncompetitively slow for a commercial   
   production run. You could note the size of custom lathe-turned parts on the   
   mining equipment.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)