I bought a 1220 LTD back in 2000, and it has been a fantastic lathe. The mill head wouldn't allow reasonable cutting w/out walking across the work. I used both locking features, etc. I ended up taking the mill head off the machine and it's sitting on a shelf in the shed. I ended up buying a 9X49 knee mill in 2005 and never looked back.
I can take a .001 cut on the lathe, and haven't had to do any extraordinary maintenance. In fact the only part I've had to replace was the carriage drive gear, and that's only because I "crashed" it.
For the money, it'll be hard to find a decent lathe that has powerfeed on both longitudinal and crossfeed axes as far as my search has shown me. |