Alan

There seems to be a number of technical colleges at present selling off the contents of their machine shop. I would suggest you find one of the Colchester range that such places used; they had quite an easy life compared to puduction machines. I think buying a cheaper new unit is bad practice – go for the real thing. Lots of good machines for sale – just Google 'Colchester'

Good luck

Tony

Just my opinion but I would go for a Colchester too. Plenty of range variety of "big" sizes from Chipmasters, through master/student up to magnums and mastiffs, excellent built in threadcutting capabilities metric and imperial on the same machine, enough mass for real work, spares and accessories readily available,new and s/h fairly cheaply . Harrisons also good but tend to have lower spindle speeds and the range is more difficult to understand. Both are excellent quality.

Largish toolroom lathes such as Holbrooks (bit old and slow spindle speeds), CVAs (excellent),DSGs (v.heavy and more expensive, bit slow on spindle speeds), and Smart and Browns all come up second hand, ridiculously cheaply for the quality, (usually cheaper than Colchesters) and are a class above Colchesters but unless you got a comprehensively equipped one chasing the accessories can be almost impossible and expensive.A very comprehensively tooled CVA toolroom lathe attracted no bids on ebay this week at a start price of £750. It was stated to be in goodish nick and probably cost, with the tooling £35,000 back in the 1950s !!! And IMO would have been worth every penny.  Hardings also in this class but for some strange reason are very much more expensive s/h.None of these except DSGs go as big as Colchesters. I would n't bother with a smaller lathe. Myfords for instance are nice for smaller model making but ridiculously expensive for the quality and capabilities compared with all the above and it sounds as if you want to do real work with the lathe. Boxfords are better value and have more capability than Myfords ,but why not go straight for an easy -to- use Colchester, which won't be much if any dearer. Another possibility is a 13 inch swing Emco but these are rarer s/h, a bit dearer and no gap bed.

I realise the above contains a lot of generalisations and you have to do the standard caveat emptor checks on a second hand lathe but I would say for your requirements as posted, a Colchester is almost the only choice. Just my two pennorth.

Edited By alan frost on 20/02/2012 01:15:36

Hi Alan,

I have a metric Colchester Chipmaster 5×20 in very nice condition with thread cutting, 3 & 4 jaw chucks, face plate, fixed steady, 4 post quick change tool head, tool holders, chuck, rotating and fixed centres etc. It is 3 phase and I have a Transwave single phase converter available.

Also available is a Downham Mini Borer, verticle power feed mill.

Thanks,

Chris