carl0s
Plastic
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2019
Hi. Quick intro, I want to make something. I want to make a motorbike gauge housing. It will be about 78mm O/D, certainly made from aluminium to begin with, in two parts that screw together - as you might expect. Probably with a protruding bevel on the front piece.
So I am set on a lathe. Before the lathe-moment, I thought I would try to make it out of s/s pipe + plasma-cut face & back circles/rings (with no bevel of course), and then TIG-braze (silicon bronze) the pieces together, because that would be an impressive looking thing, and people would like that, but.. the pipe or tube sizes are unsuitable for my ~72mm round LCD display, and.. well now I realise that a lathe is the right machine - and I just want the satisfaction of making something, and now I have something set in mind to make.
The big question is, (and I think I know the answer, but I'm worried about getting stuck with an old lathe that doesn't run parallel, or has other limitations).. should I buy an old lathe, or a modern Chinese one? I bought a Chinese milling machine a few years ago (Amadeal AMA25LV. cost me more than I remembered. Wish I'd kept it now.) and I blew the motor controller in no time, the handles all worked loose all the time, and, well, I now realise that bigger is better. I probably should have stuck to aluminium on that, but didn't. Still, if I was buying an Asian machine now, I'd spend a bit more (£2,000 ish), and I'd make sure it was the biggest I could afford, and used an invertor driven motor, which I gather is better. That milling machine of mine ended up with a treadmill motor botched onto it.
There's this Churchill Cub mk3 for sale, and it's local to me (oh yeah, I'm in the UK. I think we're lucky when it comes to ~1950s metalwork machinery). I have the space for it - could go at the back of my double garage, but I wouldn't be able to use it until I converted it to use a variable frequency drive thingy, which I'm not even sure might need a different motor anyway, and also it's limited to 1,000rpm, and I'm not sure if that'll be a problem. It seems to come with a lot of useful stuff though. Should I buy it? Must admit, I'd really like a sexy looking Smart & Brown 1024 or other curvy non-modern style thing with big levers though. They are perfect retro.
Almost forgot, the Churchill Cub mk3. It has a screwcutting gearbox, but the seller says it can cut metric with the change wheels. Now, for my gauge, I suppose it doesn't matter what thread I use, but I suppose I might want to make something fit something else in future, which would mean metric for me here in the UK. Does the changewheels mean I can't use the nice selectors to choose thread pitches, and have to switch gears every time? Should I care about that?
So, given the limited RPM, metric changewheel stuff, the fact that I'd have to get the motor working - and most importantly, my lack of any knowledge about what is right/wrong with a lathe - is this Churchill Cub mk3 worth my consideration? A new Chinese lathe would need a bench making. Plus, I'm not actually up to speed with the electronics of my project anyway.. I still have 6 months to a year of microcontroller programming to learn before I have something ready to put into a housing.
So I am set on a lathe. Before the lathe-moment, I thought I would try to make it out of s/s pipe + plasma-cut face & back circles/rings (with no bevel of course), and then TIG-braze (silicon bronze) the pieces together, because that would be an impressive looking thing, and people would like that, but.. the pipe or tube sizes are unsuitable for my ~72mm round LCD display, and.. well now I realise that a lathe is the right machine - and I just want the satisfaction of making something, and now I have something set in mind to make.
The big question is, (and I think I know the answer, but I'm worried about getting stuck with an old lathe that doesn't run parallel, or has other limitations).. should I buy an old lathe, or a modern Chinese one? I bought a Chinese milling machine a few years ago (Amadeal AMA25LV. cost me more than I remembered. Wish I'd kept it now.) and I blew the motor controller in no time, the handles all worked loose all the time, and, well, I now realise that bigger is better. I probably should have stuck to aluminium on that, but didn't. Still, if I was buying an Asian machine now, I'd spend a bit more (£2,000 ish), and I'd make sure it was the biggest I could afford, and used an invertor driven motor, which I gather is better. That milling machine of mine ended up with a treadmill motor botched onto it.
There's this Churchill Cub mk3 for sale, and it's local to me (oh yeah, I'm in the UK. I think we're lucky when it comes to ~1950s metalwork machinery). I have the space for it - could go at the back of my double garage, but I wouldn't be able to use it until I converted it to use a variable frequency drive thingy, which I'm not even sure might need a different motor anyway, and also it's limited to 1,000rpm, and I'm not sure if that'll be a problem. It seems to come with a lot of useful stuff though. Should I buy it? Must admit, I'd really like a sexy looking Smart & Brown 1024 or other curvy non-modern style thing with big levers though. They are perfect retro.
Almost forgot, the Churchill Cub mk3. It has a screwcutting gearbox, but the seller says it can cut metric with the change wheels. Now, for my gauge, I suppose it doesn't matter what thread I use, but I suppose I might want to make something fit something else in future, which would mean metric for me here in the UK. Does the changewheels mean I can't use the nice selectors to choose thread pitches, and have to switch gears every time? Should I care about that?
So, given the limited RPM, metric changewheel stuff, the fact that I'd have to get the motor working - and most importantly, my lack of any knowledge about what is right/wrong with a lathe - is this Churchill Cub mk3 worth my consideration? A new Chinese lathe would need a bench making. Plus, I'm not actually up to speed with the electronics of my project anyway.. I still have 6 months to a year of microcontroller programming to learn before I have something ready to put into a housing.
Last edited:
