Would you have room for a Sieg SC3, or a SC2?

It may seem a bit big after a CO but you can do small work on a big lathe, but the other way round can be difficult.

A lot of folk do a lot of good work on mini lathes, and apart from a QCTP as standard,(Can be bought as an extra ) would probably meet your requirements. There are $ Jaw chucks, Steadies,d a Radius Turning Attachment and a Faceplate available.

I have a C3, (Secondhand ) which gets occasional use instead of the BL 12 – 24, and seems to be a useful machine, for my purposes, at least. I've made a few extras, such as a slightly crude combined Saddle and Cross Slide stop, a clone of Alistair Sinclair's Leadscrew Handwheel, and a pair of 100T gears to reduce the feed rate.

In my mind, the only serious shortcoming is that the Cross Slide is not T slotted.

There have been several articles in MEW about making accessories to make it more user friendly and adaptable,

Alistair Sinclair and Mike Cox articles have recently been repeated in MEW, to give an idea of what folk do.

HTH

Howard

..

In terms of quality of construction, the Cowells wins hands down over the Proxxon.

Andrew.

Consider a Taig lathe as well

I have a Taig Micro lathe with the ER16 collet headstock. It is very small but works very well for small items. The ER collets handle material up to 10mm diameter. Anything bigger goes in the three or four jaw. See John Bentley's (http://modelengines.info) website for the sort of things it is capable of – in the right hands. However it doesn't really meet your requirements as it is only available in imperial. Fitting a metric DRO might solve that problem – it's on my (long) to do list.

Sherline do a very similar sized lathe that is available with metric leadscrews. It is also available with an ER16 headstock.

Pricing on both is likely to be lower than Cowells, and there are a host of add-ons and extras available to customise the machines to your needs.

Edited By Peter Cook 6 on 06/10/2020 12:36:37

Peter Cook's suggestion of thr er16 collet chuck is worth thinking about, as it gives you the extra precision to hold very small work. Your lathe is already very compact and might benifit from some good additions made to it.

+1 on the Pultra suggestion.

I have a fully tooled up 1770 on the cabinet stand and it takes up about the same same floor space as my Myford.

But you can fit a pultra into a space about half of that if you arrange the drive so it is under the bench. The Pultra can be fitted with loads of different attachments for all sorts of jobs, and you can add to the kit as you go along as it quite often comes up on ebay.

The build quality is second to none on these lathes and they seem to last forever.

Phil

Since you already have a lathe first build a bigger shed

John, on the subject of rigidity of Taigs, you might like to look at

Lathe Rigidity (modelengines.info)

I have a Cowells ME90 that was bequeathed to me, it is an older model probably 30 or so years but it works very well. The only real problem is that the headstock spindle thread is the earlier M14 by 1.5, whereas most aftermarket bits are M14 by 1.0, and the lectrics are difficult to source spares for. The motor is obsolete and it uses a start relay that seems unobtainable, Cowells don't have any, basically it is a slow to operate relay that disconnects the motor start winding. Mine has become very slow to operate so it runs very lumpily until the relay eventually works.At the moment neither is a major problem and I don't really use the machine that much. The other thing that might be an issue is top speed, the earlier ones were three speed of which the fastest is 880 rpm. Other than that they are probably the best of the obtainable v small lathes unless you can afford Schaublin. You don't state whether you are buying new, and if so none of the above much matters but certainly the Cowells in preference to the Proxxon.

Reghards

Martin

Edited By Martin Shaw 1 on 06/10/2020 16:10:05

I have Cowells, Pultras, Taig, Unimats 3 and SL and two watchmakers lathes. In terms of useability, the Cowells heads the list, followed by the Unimat 3. If I were in your position, with no financial limit, I'd go for the Cowells (new spindle 14 x 1) ; with limited, but reasonably deep pockets, I'd look at the Sherline (local clockmaker has the extended bed version and swears by it).

rgds

Bill

I doubt if they will go bust soon. I am told that they have not been so busy for sixteen years.

JA