I’m looking to upgrade and would like to hear some advice from the group here.
By trade I am an Electrical Engineer, but my hobbies lean pretty hard to heavy duty DIY. I am an amatuer race car diver and an avid shooter. I hold a license with the SCCA and manage a endurance racing team in ChampCar (previously known as ChumpCar), I’ve shot IPSC and 3 gun for 20 years. I build the cars i race, maintain and modify them. I’m the suspension guy, the brake guy, tbd guy ... you name it. I also maintain and repair a small fleet of family cars and trucks. I’ve always had a deep enjoyment for mechanical and electrical machines.
I bought my first metal working machine, a round column mill, in college and built a bunch of things, parts for other machines, a very custom 10/22 designed for the Sportsman’s Team Callenge, the mechanical parts for my senior design project, etc. After college i added a South Bend 9A, replaced the mill with a Bridgeport that i rebuild from the ground up, added a DoAll 20” vertical saw, and transitioned through several horizontal bandsaws (currently running a nice Wells A7, probably not my final saw). I also have a Southbend 16” but it is disassembled at the moment.
In the past year i have found myself turning 2” - 4” parts, often requiring lots of material removal. Recently i made a set of custom suspension bushings out of 4” solid, required a 1.5” through hole and reduction of the outside diameter to 3.5” with a step to 2.5”. The little 9A did it, but it was painfully slow, taking over 4 hours. Most painful was boring the through hole as the belt drive just refused to push my larger silver and deming bits.
As you may have surmised I have been buying old domestic equipment which was certainly the proverbial wisdom In the past as the initial flood of Harbor Freight and other affordable Asian machines were not very rigid or of high quality.
I want to replace my 9A with a more capable machine of similar capacity. I am considering a Monarch 10ee, Hardinge HLV-H, smaller LeBlond or possibly an import from Taiwan (Precision Matthews) or South Korea (takisawa). I don’t chamber barrels, and if i did need to, the 16” SBL could handle that. Keep in mind that i am not going to buy a clapped out machine, either it turns a test bar under .0005 or I’m not interested.
I have quite a bit of various HSS, carbide insert and cemented tooling and tool holders already on hand.
My corner of the country is nearly devoid of good condition used machines so it’s likely going to be a drive to get one. Given a budget of ~8k including any fetching, palleting, and shipping would you just order up a 1340GT or 1440GT or hunt up a used domestic precision machine?
By trade I am an Electrical Engineer, but my hobbies lean pretty hard to heavy duty DIY. I am an amatuer race car diver and an avid shooter. I hold a license with the SCCA and manage a endurance racing team in ChampCar (previously known as ChumpCar), I’ve shot IPSC and 3 gun for 20 years. I build the cars i race, maintain and modify them. I’m the suspension guy, the brake guy, tbd guy ... you name it. I also maintain and repair a small fleet of family cars and trucks. I’ve always had a deep enjoyment for mechanical and electrical machines.
I bought my first metal working machine, a round column mill, in college and built a bunch of things, parts for other machines, a very custom 10/22 designed for the Sportsman’s Team Callenge, the mechanical parts for my senior design project, etc. After college i added a South Bend 9A, replaced the mill with a Bridgeport that i rebuild from the ground up, added a DoAll 20” vertical saw, and transitioned through several horizontal bandsaws (currently running a nice Wells A7, probably not my final saw). I also have a Southbend 16” but it is disassembled at the moment.
In the past year i have found myself turning 2” - 4” parts, often requiring lots of material removal. Recently i made a set of custom suspension bushings out of 4” solid, required a 1.5” through hole and reduction of the outside diameter to 3.5” with a step to 2.5”. The little 9A did it, but it was painfully slow, taking over 4 hours. Most painful was boring the through hole as the belt drive just refused to push my larger silver and deming bits.
As you may have surmised I have been buying old domestic equipment which was certainly the proverbial wisdom In the past as the initial flood of Harbor Freight and other affordable Asian machines were not very rigid or of high quality.
I want to replace my 9A with a more capable machine of similar capacity. I am considering a Monarch 10ee, Hardinge HLV-H, smaller LeBlond or possibly an import from Taiwan (Precision Matthews) or South Korea (takisawa). I don’t chamber barrels, and if i did need to, the 16” SBL could handle that. Keep in mind that i am not going to buy a clapped out machine, either it turns a test bar under .0005 or I’m not interested.
I have quite a bit of various HSS, carbide insert and cemented tooling and tool holders already on hand.
My corner of the country is nearly devoid of good condition used machines so it’s likely going to be a drive to get one. Given a budget of ~8k including any fetching, palleting, and shipping would you just order up a 1340GT or 1440GT or hunt up a used domestic precision machine?