Reply To: Turns/ lathe

[david pierce]

Willofiam and Randy,
I would like to throw in my two cents worth. For small precision parts the Chinese lathe from various suppliers such as Sincere is an excellant lathe. The accessories such as cross slide, tailstock, gear cutting, dividing attachments, precision drilling attachments are available and affordable. It is a very high precision machine and will produce a highly polished finish on small pivots with just a turning tool. On tiny parts the precision becomes more critical because the error introduced from the spindle can be a sizable percentage of the part diameter. The tail stock takes ww collets and actually lines up with the spindle. The bad points are it is a small light duty lathe for small high precision parts. It was neither designed for large parts nor heavy cuts. The other point is the model I bought had a different thread form than the standard 8mm ww collets. I solved the problem by ordering a tap from Merlin tools and running it through the drawtubes. I believe now the lathe can be purchased with the standard thread but in any case this was a very minor problem.
For clock parts a bigger lathe with a different belt system would be a better choice. An “A” belt can deliver a lot more power from the motor to the spindle than the round watch lathe belts. Also, a watch lathe motor is not a powerful motor in the first place. By virtue of the size of clock parts compared to watch parts, precision is not as much of an issue as power. Trying to drill a 1/4 inch hole through a brass or steel plate is very difficult to do with a watchmaker lathe. A Sherline or a Taig will not have anywhere near the precision of the smaller watchmaker lathe but will have the power and enough precision to make clock parts. The last time I looked, Sherline lathes were expensive. The Taig is offered at a much lower price, has the same precision as the Sherline and has a bigger motor.
For ultra ultra precision, larger than watchmaker size, and a powerful motor, take a look at the Derbyshire Instrument Lathes. The Sherlines have gotten so expensive it would probably be worth it to kick in a couple more thousand dollars and go with the best lathe of that size in the world.
David Pierce