On 2/4/2015 4:19 AM, Marcus Bowman wrote: > Yes; that's my impression too. The market for that kind of lathe now seems to > be the 'fully refurbished' manual lathes at relatively breathtaking cost > (very old refurbished Hardinge HLV-H lathes seem to fetch around the 10K GBP > = 16K USD). Still a gap in the small to mid range CNC lathes, though. I find > the industrial ones too big and heavy for my workshop (I need to be able to > get more than just the one machine in the workspace), and the Tormach-sized > lathes are few and far between (and also quite expensive at around 14.5K GBP > = 22K USD in the UK, delivered, tax paid, but I shouldn't complain about > that).
Someone needs to put the Denford ORAC back into production, with updated controls of course. It's an 8x16 and weighs around 310 pounds. Modern controls would save a bit off that. Toss a Beagle Bone Black with LCNC in it and put a color touscreen LCD on the front where the old mono CRT was and that would be great. Have to keep the car stereo and speakers, but put the training audio on a USB stick as MP3 files. ;) There just isn't a decent sized, commercially produced, benchtop CNC lathe available new. They're all based on Taig or Sherline or similar toy/modelmaker lathes. The next step up in size is the small end of the big full enclosed lathes and machining centers, many of which for their size don't have as much capacity as the old ORAC. The Magnaturn 612 was among the smallest of that style of CNC lathe but limited by its 6" swing and it was rather slow. (Youtube videos, you call that a "rapid" move?) Boxford made one about that size and HAAS had their Office Lathe, but at 1,300 pounds was pushing the upper boundary of "small" really hard. Newer than that, and possible to set on a benchtop, was the Dyna Mechtronics Dyna Myte DM3000. Find one that's all functional and it won't *have* to be given a refit to make it usable as a production machine. 'Course being the newest (though discontinued) small but not wee little toy CNC lathe you'll find, you'll have to pay good money for one in good condition with functional electronics. But if you're shopping for new, ready to go, it's either the tiny, excessively expensive (yet Sherline sells enough they had to bypass moving production into a 20+K square foot building built for it to a 66K building) little ones or one that'll take up half your garage and require running a new electric service, yet won't have near the working capacity of a manual lathe of similar footprint. Oh, Tormach sells a 7" swing CNC lathe and even has an option to use it as a 4th axis on their mill, but it's the same-old, same-old Chinese 7x that's been made for at least 30 years. I had two 7x manual lathes and did quite a lot of work with them, they could not be pushed very hard and I could push on the headstock with one finger and make a test indicator move against a piece in the chuck. Better than the Taig, Sherline and Clisby sized machines but not by much. So please, someone in the machine tool industry, figure out how to make an ORAC or DM3000 size CNC lathe that doesn't cost as much as a new car. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
