Recommendations for a home CNC Lathe? Microkinetics?

[kevincnc]

Hi all,
One of the machinists at work is looking at buying a Microkinetics lathe. Does anyone have experience with one and/or recommend anything else in that price range?
TIA,
Kevin

[smallblock]

Take a look at the Shopmaster- SHOPMASTER USA | CNC Machine and Tooling
Their machine is a solid 17 X 30 lathe plus mill. They use VFD controls, Gecko drives and Mach III software. Lathe can do threading, CSS etc.

[kevincnc]

Thanks smallblock, I passed that along. Anyone else?

[Gundawg]

I have also wondered about the Microkenetics and the Bolton lathe.

[Bob La Londe]

Syil America C6-B CNC Lathe | Bench top CNC | Bench top Mill | Used CNC milling machines | CNC Mills ???

NL-150 | Novakon ???

[GITERDUN]

Syil America C6-B CNC Lathe | Bench top CNC | Bench top Mill | Used CNC milling machines | CNC Mills ???

NL-150 | Novakon ???

Looks like a home made conversion of standard Chinese lathe. In the background you can see its in someone's basement. No shield for the Y axis ball screw makes it look like a hasty cobble up.

[Bob La Londe]

Looks like a home made conversion of standard Chinese lathe. In the background you can see its in someone's basement. No shield for the Y axis ball screw makes it look like a hasty cobble up.

You must mean the Syil. The Novakon in the link I provided looks pretty sharp. I just threw in the Syil because of the price. Neither is very big.

I am not sure which axis is the Y axis on a lathe. The Z-axis ballscrew clearly does not have a screw cover that I can see though. The X-axis screw appears to be inside the cross slide (as is normal) and not exposed at all. It does look like the picture may have been taken inside a house or office rather than in a warehouse, but most basements don't have sliding doors.

[allesg]

I have used a MicroKinetics 1236. It has a very limited ISO standard G CODE set that I found very tedious to work with compared to a HAAS tool room lathe. The 1236 tool post is really stripped down. We replaced it with a much nicer one from EBAY but it wouldn't allow a 1/2" tool shank. That can be a limiting factor right there. The one I used had no VFD, that is an extra cost option.
Documentation - pretty skimpy - probably writtten by the designer, but not written for normal humans.
Support - Excellent but you Must have a support contract.
If I were planning to cut many different things and rarely the same thing over again, I would want a much more powerful instruction set.
If I were cutting the same set of aluminum parts over and over, a MicroKinetics could save money but I'd still look for something that allows larger tool shank and a better instruction set. If I were cutting steel, I'd want a VFD and the ability to use tools with at least a .625" tool shank.
If I needed something cut on a lathe, I might very well just pay to have it done as opposed to using a 1236 - even though I can use one for free. I guess I'm pretty spoiled when it comes to programming.

[kevincnc]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I forgot to check this thread for a couple of months