I am about to move house which will I clude building a new workshop... after 26 years my Inca TR1S Lathe is getting past its best... who or where can I buy a replacement Lathe from, don't mind secondhand as long as its in good nick...
I live in South Devon
I am about to move house which will I clude building a new workshop... after 26 years my Inca TR1S Lathe is getting past its best... who or where can I buy a replacement Lathe from, don't mind secondhand as long as its in good nick...
I live in South Devon
Hi John
I really don't know what resources you have available to you in the UK.
what I did was scour the Facebook marketplace for a few months & if your patient & quick with the cash, you can find a good deal. I've bought a lot of machinery in the past year & not much of it was new. I was actually preparing to buy new (Precision Matthews) vertical mill & lathe, but a knee mill came up on our Facebook marketplace (a selling place associated with Facebook) & I was the 1st to respond & the nice seller agreed to hold it till the weekend so I could pick it up. the lathe came from a notice that I put in the "hobby machinist" forum, a machinery dealer saw my notice & rang me up & we made a deal, he was very accommodating. the beauty of buying second hand is that often the machine comes with an accumulation of extra tooling, which both of my purchases did. the bad thing about buying used is you really need to give the machine a thorough going over, I'm not just talking about turning it on & seeing if it runs. like your nearly worn-out lathe..."after 26 years my Inca TR1S Lathe is getting past its best", you'll want to bring measuring devices & tools to really check it out, go through every gear change, every speed change, check for looseness in the bearings, check for small/large cracks in the castings, was it lovingly cared for? single/3 phase. there are plenty of "how to buy a used lathe" video's on youtube, get really knowledgeable on what to look for & how to test its trueness. with a new lathe you will get a warranty & hopefully technical help for a time.
good luck & let us know what you find.