Have to say that, based on my small dealings with Chester, have found that Warco are far better on after sales service.

Howard.

Chester after sales are awful to say the least. I bought a DB10S last year and promised myself I'd never spend another penny there. Got mill and bandsaw from Warco and had a much better experience.

i have a Chester 20vs milling machine needed a new motor last year ordered no problem delivered next day

stripped a drive gear the girl on the phone really dint no what i was talking about sent me the drawings order the new part was delivered in a day found them very helpful and dispatch spares promptly hope this helps

Geoff

I have had good and bad experiences from Chester, have never dealt with Warco, but I suspect they are all much the same. Seems to be very much the luck of the draw.

Reminds me of what a friend of mine said many years ago. He was involved in car sales and said "Any one can sell a car to a customer, but can he sell to him a second time ?" Good question !

I bought a Crusader 8 years ago, after sales and machine prep crap, lathe its self is fantastic!

Jim

I purchased a GH1322 from Warco a few months ago having considered the Chester equivalent. I didn't find Chester sales particularly helpful where Warco were.

To clinch the deal one way or the other I decided to visit both, I was told I needed to make an appointment to visit Chester in their Midland branch so decided to go to Warco first, a two and three quarter hour trip. Steve who is based in their showroom and covers spares was very helpful, I wanted to look inside the electrics box and at the motor as I was considering a three phase m/c to used with an inverter as they are £650 less than the single phase version.

Due to the large price difference I opted for the Wraco, I didn't bother to make an appointment with Chester. The lathe turned up as promised and after a few days cleaning down and just tidying up the typical Chinese rough edges it was installed with the inverter, bought as a package from Inverterdrive Supermarket, Peter their technical chap was extremely helpful. I had a minor problem with a micro switch, Warco got one to me the next day after a call, but otherwise I'm very happy with it.

Hope that helps.

Magpie,

I think that man you mentioned at Chester may have been John. If so, I agree, he was both courteous and helpful, to a fault and I think a sad loss to Chester when he retired. If he is still around, I wish him well.

There is something wrong when you have to make an appointment to go look at a machine in a place like Chester or Warco or any such supplier, none of them are that big, or is it because of this virus ?

At the end of the day, the Sale is only one part of the deal, it,s the service that really counts and this is where most suppliers need to brush up.

First Sale easy

Repeat Sale maybe not so easy !

I bought a crusader deluxe 3 or 4 years ago, and it's my only lathe (at the moment ) I've made quite a lot of 6" traction engine bits on it including Crank shaft and turned some big castings, it was bought to replace a tired colchester student which needed a bed grind to do anything longer than a few inches. I looked at a lot of M300's etc. but all in my price range were pretty knackered, if I had 10k that's what I would buy.

The lathe is pretty well made, and you get a lot for the money, I added an ER40 collet chuck and DRO to the standard stuff. As someone said the chucks (esp 4 jaw) are big but that suits me fine.

I've just finished by Little samson crankshaft and only got a taper of the than .0005" over about 18" (and it's eccentric to machine) . Good enough for me

I've also fettled some bits, replaced allen screws with presto ones here and there and generally improved it. But I have used it since day2… it took some effort to get all of the packing grease/oil of it.

The accessories were pretty crap tbh, The fixed steady was off centre by 20mm and 18mm low. The bed stop was so rough internally the micrometer part could not rotate, but they weren't too hard to fix properly. If I had checked them when I got them I woudl have just sent them back.

They were pretty poor on communications, the lathe turned up unannounced on the back of a truck one day, no advice note despite quite a lot of asking. One bit was missing, arrived 24 hours later when I asked them for it.

Get everything you might want with it, check it fits…. my efforts to get soft jaws even 6 months later were fruitless, but they offered 10% off a new chuck with some soft jaws…

I like the lathe, the whole "customer experience"… not so much