I'm mainly a garage tinkerer and do whatever trips my trigger at the time, lol. But I mainly work in steel more precisely mystery metal. I think the work envelope of the 1030 is ok for me but if I can go bigger I will which will be dictated by budget. Used worn out machines do not catch my fancy much so I look for a jewel at a decent price not expecting to find one. New seems to have the most appeal. So a 1030v or 1127 or 1228 or 1236 is the order of the wish list. The 3in1 I have has a 1 inch spindle bore and that has not been to big an issue mostly bed length. Any input is very appreciated!
I work with mystery metal a lot too. There is a recycle center near me that has a bunch of cut offs from professionals. They will sort it into aluminum, stainless steel, and not stainless steel.
Here is a 1.75(ish, more like 1.79")x12" I got and cleaned up on the lathe.
Here is the finish I got with a toolholder I made.
Another piece of scrap from the yard.
And after cleaning up.
On the last one, you can see the color of the chips. It is a very capable machine in my opinion. When hogging steel, I have gotten the thing running 800 RPM with its fastest feed on 1.5" material and it rips through it no problem. On my thread about the machine, I detail all the issues I have found with it and in most cases, how I corrected them to improve the machine. I also talk about some of the things I have done with it so you can have a little idea of what it is capable of.
I can't comment on the 1030v vs a larger machine because the 1030v is the largest I have used. I came from a 7x12 HF lathe and the 1030v was a massive upgrade.
At the time, I was also looking online for used machines because I always see threads of guys who pick up 14x40 lathes with 4 chucks, 50 carbide inserts, 10 holders, a collet system, and DRO installed for $500 delivered and installed (Ok thats in exaggeration, but you know what I am talking about). After about 3 months of searching, the only deal I saw was a 16x96 lathe a guy was selling for $800 but that wouldn't fit in a 2 car garage nor in the back of an SUV
. I also didn't know enough at the time to determine if I was getting a worn out piece of junk or a nice machine with lots of life left (now I might be able to figure it out, maybe...).
Going with the PM, I think the big selling point was the guys over at QMT. I emailed back and forth with a bunch of questions, many of them I now know were pretty dumb, and Matt answered all of them. There wasn't any pushy salesman kind of stuff, just straight answers to make sure I got the machine I needed, not the machine that made them the most money. When I have trouble with the machine, answers and assistance from QMT have never taken more than 24 hours. I would be hard pressed to buy a machine from another company over QMT just because of the customer service.
I hope that helps. Im not trying to be a salesman or anything, just sharing my experience.