Re: FWIW first welding job, 2 years on

"Richard Smith"  wrote in message news:m134iif6sy.fsf@void.com...
I'd like to have a lathe again for sure.
When I was a youth I had no connection to anyone familiar or who could
mentor me.
Now I have been involved in a lot of commercial manufacturing operations
and done a fair amount of machining.
With landing-down here, might soon come time to look at this - getting
some machine tools.
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Since cost normally scales up with capacity it would help to note what you would do with it. I learned foundry practice by age 5, had been making gadgets on wood shop machines since I was 8 and ran industrial machinery during high school, so I had a pretty good idea of what I would buy when available.
My lathe turns up to  5" center height, 10" diameter to the left of the carriage. It's fine for delicate instrument work, adequate for making and repairing tools and outdoor equipment to at least 6HP, but it can't turn my brake drums or rotors. Replacements for them are cheap enough to not justify a larger lathe. It was nice for designing - while - machining a prototype or one-time custom job but would be uncompetitively slow for a commercial production run. You could note the size of custom lathe-turned parts on the mining equipment.