buying a lathe?

[LisaGinkgo]

Originally Posted by Chak

Thanks for everyone's response!
Our budget is $2000. We don't have a machining mentor, so I think our coach is more comfortable buying new. It looks like our choices are one of the around $1000 benchtop lathes like the ones at Harbor Freight or Little Machine Shop + tooling. Anyone have advice/warnings/experiences with these lathes?

I'm very far from an expert, and I'd recommend taking other people's advise when it comes to comparing the quality of different lathes. I bought a 7x12 mini lathe from Harbor Freight last year though, if you're interested in Harbor Freight lathes. I also bought a quick-change toolpost set from them for it, which has worked out fairly well. As people have mentioned, the lathe has a lot of difficulty handling steel. I used it mostly for aluminum 1/2" hex shafts during Build Season last year, and I've found it works fairly well for basic things (facing, parting, cutting grooves for retaining rings). My main issue with it is that I've had a bit of trouble parting aluminum to length--my parted shafts tend to be about 0.005"-0.01" over or under (delrin spacers are within 0.003" of their desired length). I haven't tried turning threads or anything more complex with it yet, but at least on my team, that's rarely necessary. If you do buy it, I'd recommend buying your cutting tools from someone other than Harbor Freight.
It's definitely nowhere near as good as the Monarch and Hardinge lathes I've used (it's not as powerful, of course, so I generally only take 0.05" cuts if I'm not parting), but it's worked out alright for me.