What is a Whacheon lathe? One of my customers has a Hwacheon which they like very much. They also have three Mori Sekis and seem to consider the two makes interchangeable.
Bill
Spelling is the same... in OLD ("Chinese" characters..) Korean! We translate it more than one way is all.
Whacheon U.S.A., Inc. - Commercial Lathes - Used Lathe Equipment & Parts - www.whacheon.com
hwacheon
The South Korean firm began with building a fully-licensed "clone" of the Japanese all-manual Mori-Seiki as most major makers moved-over to NC, then CNC. or just left the building of lathes - or even of machine-tools, in general - altogether.
Same blueprints as Mori, originally, AFAIK. They may have diverged, since - not necessarily in a "bad" way, time has moved on, etc..
Either way, it is generally regarded as a high-grade "industrial duty" lathe, just as the Mori was. Which, BTW, was "good", but not the same as "near perfect".
I'd take a Lodge & Shipley, late-era Smart & Brown, similar sized Monarch, or even a Cazeneuve HB, several other European Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian, Swiss, Basque-Spanish, Czech.. lathes.. and more .. any day of any week.
Just about
every industrialized nation built one or more VERY good lathes. Among their national treasures, so to speak. MANY of the top-end UK & European ones where inherently inch-metric AND had easier threading enhancements than their inch-moslty US counterparts ever had to be bothered with at all.
But where to find those? And in what condition? And what about spares? .. because..
Downside is that MOST of those Grand Old
all-manuals have gone out of production, and
long ago, while the Hwacheon still ships, new, under more than one brand, still has NEW spare parts, even for their OLDER lathes.
Look at what Okuma, LeBlond-Makino, or Cazeneuve are shipping
present-day.
Closest thing to "all-manual" are CNC hybrid "teach in" lathes.
Sweet and capable items - if only you have the MONEY! Serious money. Most pure-CNC can be less costly than the manual/CNC "hybrids" are. Simpler electronics, one input, not two, if nothing else.
And then... one has to support and maintain the electronics and software? You know anything about the "exchange of Seimenal fluid"? Ask those who do. "Tough love" may apply, struggling smallholders, not the latest and high-cost deep-pockets best?
Might be better to buy a South Korean all-manual you can afford to keep
running, yah?