Emco Super 11 Lathe / Mill

Wanted: Emco Super 11 Lathe / Mill

Hey Guys,

I don't post here much, but I've been searching for a long time for a machine that I think would be right for me. I'm looking for an Emco Super 11 with the lathe / mill combo. I've been searching nation-wide craigslist, ebay, FB and machinery sites for a while with no luck. Figured I would try here. Thanks.

What do you want to do with it? I've never seen anyone happy with a lathe/mill combo.

mhajicek said:

What do you want to do with it? I've never seen anyone happy with a lathe/mill combo.

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My initial thinking is to do some prototyping for pens and maybe knives.

What's the deal with the combos? Just not accurate / rigid enough?

I owned a Super 11 and can tell you that the mill portion was taken off and stored until I sold the lathe last year. It can't mill stuff in the lathe headstock (too far away) and the spindle, although decent for it's size, isn't cut out for much.

You'd be miles ahead to look for the lathe without the milling head and go get any standalone mill with a real table.

ModernMuseum said:

My initial thinking is to do some prototyping for pens and maybe knives.

What's the deal with the combos? Just not accurate / rigid enough?

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It's like an F-35. Trying to do too many things at once, no good at any of it.

BugRobotics said:

I owned a Super 11 and can tell you that the mill portion was taken off and stored until I sold the lathe last year. It can't mill stuff in the lathe headstock (too far away) and the spindle, although decent for it's size, isn't cut out for much.

You'd be miles ahead to look for the lathe without the milling head and go get any standalone mill with a real table.

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Thanks for the insight. Do you know if the mill portion can be modified (maybe with some hacking and new bracketing) to be moved over so that it would mill something in the lathe headstock?

ModernMuseum said:

Thanks for the insight. Do you know if the mill portion can be modified (maybe with some hacking and new bracketing) to be moved over so that it would mill something in the lathe headstock?

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Yea, that's possible as it's just bolted onto the lathe. I was thinking about doing something similar to make a dedicated station for my tapping head. Paired with a X-Y table from, say a Fehlmann Picomax, I'm sure you could get some work done.

The spindle on mine was an MT2 which again is kinda limiting.

I'll second getting two separate machines. If you can.

Emco sold the same milling head and column, as the FB-2 mill. Not a particularly heavy duty machine, but far more flexible to set up for the various operations, than trying to set up to both mill and turn on the lathe.

One option that may be of use for you is to follow the British Model Engineer's (the North American equivalent would be Home Shop Machinist, mostly) approach, and mount a cutting spindle on either the table of the lathe or on the tool post.

Take a look at the Hemmingway Kits Quick-Step Mill, as one option, or steal a similar idea from where you can. While they no longer provide the Quick-Step, the plans and instructions for building one from scratch were published in Model Engineer magazine some years ago, and likely can be found.
With the ready availability of variable speed ER spindles on eBay, you might look at the options there too. Even a headstock and motor drive from a Sherline lathe, could be adapted, quite efficiently.

Thanks for the input guys. I'll look into these options before I purchase.

They come up on FleeBay from time to time, you could also ask on the (former) Yahoo groups, that's where I found mine:

[email protected] | Topics

[email protected] | Topics

Mine came with the milling attachment but I sold it as I already had a mill. It looked to be fairly sturdy and capable of light milling, I'm sure it would get you going until you found a separate mill. Be sure to get one with the the D1-4 spindle as it will take 5C collets which are very handy. I just got a Royal collet closer for mine which makes using collets even easier.

Wonderful high end hobby/prototyping machine, good luck!