Hi Mike,

The choice of which lathe / mill to buy also depends on the size of work. The C5 lathe with mill/drill will give a small footprint machine that occupies ittle space, but I think you would be better off with a separate mill/drill. Combination machines have to make compromises. As far as I know the Emco C5 is not manufatured any more, but you can still get accessories/spares. I started with an Emco Compact 8, but found that for some of the work I do it is a bit on ther small side. A slightly larger machine can machine both small and larger work. Larger than you can in the C5 or Hobbymat, so if you can afford a larger lathe and milling machine that would be my advice. In the future you may wish to make larger models etc.

Regards

Thor

Hi Mike,

You need to decide where your ambitions lie. If you follow your father into more ambitious models you will need to buy a bigger machine or accept the need to upgrade later.

If you are sure you only want to tackle modest work, or a re limited in space and budget, then consider my dad who has an ancient unimat that meets all his shipbuilding needs. No longer made (altrhough the mill version is). Plenty of second hand examples are out there.

If you want a low cost option consider a C0 lathe – available from various suppliers – mostly compaitible with unimat as I understand it, but a bit heavier built. Other options are the TAIG/Peatol which is smaller.

Milling can be carried out by fitting a 'vertical slide' to the cross slide of these lathes. I think the Peatol can be converted into amilling machine in a similar way to some of the Unimats.

Neil