Posted by Martin Hamilton 1 on 16/11/2017 15:10:29:
… but not to sure whether either of these larger much heavier lathes are a bit overkill in size & weight.
Is that in actual size for your needs, or built with thicker castings?
You can generally make smaller things on a larger machine, but run into trouble trying to make items which are too big!
If you mean more robustly built, then usually these budget priced machines are made with little spare rigidity – built down to a price rather than up to a quality.
With variable frequency drives now costing so little, 3 phase induction motors should soon be replacing these DC drives – which seem to either need new control boards and/or motors far too often.