Critique our lathe choice

[Cory]

Originally Posted by asid61

No knowledge could be bad. If any of the students of mentors know a machinist, they could critique a lathe before purchase. If you can't find somebody like that, then maybe new is the way to go.

This one looks pretty good:
http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/da...077388442.html
The person who owns it sounds pretty reasonable, so I'm sure they would let you give it a try to see what kind of cuts and to what accuracy you can make. Looking it up on Google, it sounds like a beast of a machine- several thousand pounds and a 7.5HP motor.
No tooling except a chuck and QCTP, but you can get tooling at that price.

EDIT: Joe's link above is a good guide.

That JET lathe is a piece of crap. We had that exact model in our shop and thankfully parted ways with it. It's also not a 16x40. It's a 13x40. Model is GHB-1340A, if I remember correctly.

Buying used is great if you can get quality older American (or German/Japanese/Korean) machines...the problem is most of those are not going to be classified as "tabletop". With $3,000 to spend I'd be looking at a used Monarch 10ee or Hardinge HLV-H, which are two of the greatest "small" lathes ever made...the problem is the 10ee is 3500 lbs and the HLV-H is 2200 lbs...ie not table top.

I would under no circumstances buy a used Chinese lathe (any small Grizzly/JET/etc). They're all made by the same factory with a different badge and they all suck.