Tony

Are you looking to buy new or secondhand.

If new the Colchester. If secondhand then surely it all depends on the condition and accessories

Colchester every time if you can find a good one, I spent many happy years using one where I worked although not employed as a turner mainly used after hours for my own jobs. There is a Taiwanese Colchester lookalike sold by a Northern company that claim to be from the same production line. £18,000 last time I looked, I think they traded as something like Barlow Handling but old age and memory may be at play.

Colchester Triumph 2000 but you must find a good one. Great help to identify where its spent most of its life.

For many years new price and capabilities was attractive enough to sell into manual lathe production shops, training schools, tool rooms, experimental /prototype and maintenance shops. The production ones will be all used up as being well worth destroying for the value of what they made. Toolroom ones will have been worked well but looked after, maintenance shop ones will usually have considerably lower hours but may have been abused. Training school ones probably lowest hours but almost certainly had oopsies. Experimental / prototype shop cast off are the ones to go for, relatively low hours and looked after. Colchesters are not, in practice, economically re-buildable / re-furbishable and generally repairs will only be squeezing out a bit more life from a machine well past its prime. Although not exactly in "wonderful one horse shay, that ran for a hundred years and a day" territory once one important part is worn out most of the rest isn't far behind. Fixing serious neglect or abuse, intentional or accident, being a different matter of course.

You have to think like a businessman with machines of this ilk. Will it do the job? How much capability for how much money for how long? Hobby guy, get it cheap and fix it up as I go thinking, may work for your Myford, Boxford, Drummond, SounthBend and Super Adepts but you will be in a world of hurt and serious trouble with the domestic authorities if you try that with a Triumph 2000. Can do very well by carefully purchasing one with a known fault if the price is right but … you gotta be sure.

A good test for heavily used and / or unskilled finger-pokened machines is the run up time. Manual gives specifications for time to run up to speed with a chuck on. Any serious deviation means either worn or maladjusted clutch. Even if a lathe has clearly been well used a properly adjusted clutch suggests its been looked after. Adjustment isn't especially hard to do but has to be done by the book so if its wrong you have to wonder what else is lurking.

Check carefully if its obviously been used with coolant. Aprons do collect it and should be drained periodically when used wet. Quite possible to find one that has been run with an apron full of suds for years and still sort of working!

Clive.

Antony

Like the one you linked to. Looks smart, realistic price for a very good one from a known to be reliable supplier.

Compare to this one **LINK**. which would need a really serious crawl over to be sure it was up to the mark. Even then cosmetics would make me wonder. Somewhat overpriced methinks.

An Anijest unit is a quick threading device bypassing the manual half-nut letting you run at normal cutting speeds when screw cutting. Effective but expensive so machine has to do enough threading work to make it worthwhile. Odds are a lathe so fitted will have done a fair bit of work.

Clive.

PS Muzzer types faster.

Edited By Clive Foster on 06/05/2017 14:14:25

Tony, if you are looking at used Colchesters, then take a look at Nobilla Machine tools.

They always have a large selection and do lick of paint through to full refurbs. Look for machines with warranties and check whats also included in them.

West Point Machine Tools also normally carry one or two half decent machines.

Never be scared to haggle big and work down.