What's new
What's new

Looking for lathe

HighSpeedSquid

Plastic
Joined
Aug 18, 2019
Greetings All,

I'm looking to acquire a small lathe (700mm - 1000mm b/w centres - this fits in the garage) for home. I prefer US, European, Taiwanese brands. Will be used for smallish high precision (mainly optical) work. Also I live in Brisbane, Australia so this may restrict what's on offer.

Would greatly appreciate any advice.

Thanks in advance
Frank
(High Speed Squid)
 
Unless you want spend a fair amount, you're limited to Chinese or other machines that are commonly imported into OZ by distributors. There's some really nice machines you could get, what's your budget?

There's a few Aussie commenters here, hope one or more will notice your post and give some advice.

As to optics work, is it for supports and fixturing as for use on a optics bench, or do you actually want to figure optical elements themselves? That's a whole 'nother ballgame...
 
Hi Milland,

I had the opportunity to inspect some chinese machines alongside Taiwanese ones. The quality of the Taiwanese win hands down.
As for budget, $5k tops.
It's for making fixtures, optical instrument parts (probably could extent this to making complete optical instruments). Making a lens grinding machine is also on the list. Yes, I agree that making the glass optical components IS a totally different game. Doing this on a lathe will reduce it to a pile of rust in no time !!

There's a "local" vendor that sells Weiss lathes. I thought these were US made but it turns out they're chinese !! So the hunt goes on...

Many thanks
HighSpeedSquid
 








 
Back
Top