Yesterday I saw here in my city an Emco Emcomat 7 lathe in decent condition. I couldn’t make up my mind if to buy it or to order a new HBM180 lathe. But today, due to morning optimism, I bought it. The price was less than half of a new HBM.

I have also the cover on the left side and a lot of gears. The seller was very talkative. But the language barrier was significant. I think he said that he made some of the gears. Also they don’t look original. From what I read, one weak point of these lathes is the two levers for the headstock gearbox. But this ones look fine with no visible cracks. It has a three phase motor and it needs and external inverter. It has also the tailstock.
I did some measurements. But since I don’t have a reference or experience I can’t evaluate them. Maybe somebody could comment on this.
First I removed the chuck and I cleaned very well the Morse 3 taper in the headstock spindle. Then I inserted a calibrated MT3 test mandrel (+/-3μm if I remember well). I put the indicator on the carriage and run it across the length of the mandrel for ~220mm. I did this 4 times, rotating the spindle by 90° each time. I repeated everything once more and the results were similar:


The deviation is not linear relative to location of the indicator. This means there is wear on the bed.
Next I fixed another indicator on the carriage and I measured the runout on the internal taper.

The error is ~5μm. That is poor. My big 800kg lathe has <2μm here. If I pull up and down the spindle the indicator measure a 15μm deviation. This must be a cumulative error due to lack of rigidity of carriage, headstock and bearings. If I fix the dial indicator on the headstock and try to push again the spindle the deviation is decrease to ~4μm. This must be only the bearing play. Should I replace it? Or preload it more?
This is how it is looking inside the headstock:

There is a green thick oil inside. I got also a 5l metal can with the remaining oil. It was manufactured in 2001! I think I’ll change it. Is interesting that there are no metal gears meshed together. Some are made from textolite. To decrease the noise. That is nice.
Here are the gears. Not all are mounted. They look fine, no missing teeth or signs of wear.

The lead screw has some wear on ~10cm portion. But it is quite simple and the thread is 14 x 1.5mm, nothing special. I think I could make a new one if really needed.
Overall the lathe is nice. I like the large top saddle. You could fix many things there. I’m going to clean it and repaint it in more joyful colors. That brown looks hideous.