As an owner of a couple of standard Monarch 10EE's, I was continously frustrated by the short length of the bed. If you've got to drill into the center of a long piece, and you want to use the tailstock to drill with, there was countless times that I wished I had that extra ten inches. Now I have other lathes, but I LIKE the Monarch. So there started my hunt for the elusive long bed 10EE. Sometimes the hunt, was part of the allure.
The Texas Instruments lathe came up on E-bay about two years ago, and I think it sold for around fifty-five hundred dollars. It looked Okay but who knows. The Boeing Lathe that Don mentioned, was rode hard and put away wet many times. It looked really trashed, and sold for fifty-five hundred dollars at the Boeing auction.
I finally got mine, when Oak Ridge National Labs put four lathes up on E-bay last December. They showed just the right side of the lathe in the picture on E-bay. The ad said it was missing part of the electronics drive. It was really kind of a gamble, but I did call up and talked to someone there before I bid on it. Turns out they had sixteen 10EE's, they didn't do production work, and none of them got beat up too bad. So I was high bidder on it at $4500.00. Turns out I was bidding against Harry at Monarch Lathes for it.
The lathe when I received it, was pretty ugly paint wise, but what a CHERRY physically. It's like brand new in the ways and crosslide. Hardly any backlash in the screws. It needed two of the thyratrons, to make it run. So now I have one. The gamble paid off. I'd like to say what a joy it is to use- but frankly, I still haven't used it. I got my CNC lathe powered up about a month after receiving the 10EE, and have been happily making parts on it ever since. I use my other Monarch 10EE's for my production parts, saving the thirty inch for whatever reason. Sometimes it's more fun to search for the elusive, that it is to actually have it. But it was nice to be able to drill the drawbar hole through some of my Master Machine tool spindles on it. They were too long to do in my 22 inch CNC lathe, but were a perfect match for the 30 inch 10EE. Kind of a mundane task for such a nice lathe.