Quality of Enco lathes?

[Neil_J]

Hi,

I am now in need of a bigger lathe, I have been looking at buying a new Enco 12x36" bench lathe. I will also be looking to CNC it in the future, using a custom servomotor system, and Mach3Lathe.

Can an Enco owner give me some comments on quality of construction? What would the repeatability/backlash be, and can this be compensated for through a backlash nut? What are the limits of this machine?

Are there any better deals for ~$2500?

[Neil_J]

bump

Anyone? Repeatability of these lathes?

[mwp]

I own the Central Machinery/Harbor Freight version of this lathe. It is surprisingly accurate (except for the included 3 jaw chuck, that is). I measured something like .0001 runout on the spindle nose. The compound has around .004 backlash on both slides. 3 jaw chuck has around .005 TIR on a dowel pin 1" out... Tailstock is pretty well aligned with the headstock---drills very straight holes with no bit breakage. Little or no taper once properly leveled.

A while ago, while I was in school, we ordered the enco lathe you are contemplating purchasing. When it arrived, I was not very impressed with the quality... lots of sand, grit, and the overall finish was quite poor. In fact this is what I was expecting from the HF version as well when I bought it. When I finally popped the lid on the crate, I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the HF unit! It is possible that the Enco version has gotten better as well since I suspect that all of these machines(HF, JET, Birmingham, Enco, etc.) are made in the same factory.

Considering you can get the HF for around $1500 by waiting for a sale and using a 20% off coupon or negotiating with the manager, I think that it is a quite a bit better deal.

Regarding the CNC aspect of this lathe, I am not all that sure what the issues are yet. I am quite interested in this as well though. Microkinetics makes a cnc kit for this machine for ~$4000--too much If you ask me.


Good Luck!
Mitchell

[beezerlm]

I have considered purchasing a HF lathe for my shop. Couldn't you replace the chuck with an adjustable 3 jaw? Also, Where do you get the 20% off coupons?

[mwp]

Yep, you could replace the chuck with an adjust-tru variety. I think that just a decent regular polish chuck with two piece jaws would do the trick for me (so I could add a soft jaw to be bored to fit on the lathe). BTW, I think that the problem is in the scroll since the outside of the chuck TIR is less than .001, whereas the chuck jaws won't hold anything less than about .007 TIR. Gripping power stinks as well. Don't get me wrong about this chuck as related to the value of the lathe though... for the price of the lathe I would gladly replace the chuck. I just use the 4 jaw.

HF 20% coupons can be had from a number of sources--coupon books(usually purchased), etc. but the easiest way is to sign up for their email deals on their website. They tend to send me one about every two weeks.

[Neil_J]

mwp, is the .005" backlash in the slides adjustable?