Warco have a section for sales to educational establishments. I would give them a ring and see what they have to offer. Their machines are imports but are of good quality and they do have a good after sales service. (usual disclaimer). All machines have metric models available and inverter drives to give variable speeds. Don't take much notice of "out of stock" on their website. They will be able to advise you on stock and delivery over the phone. It maybe that a delivery is due immanently – they only put stock on the website when it is actually in their warehouse and unsold by pre-order (unlike some others who shall remain nameless!!).

Axminster are often a favoured supplier to schools and I'm not sure why – they are expensive and do not have good after sales service – the experience of 25 years in education and the thoughts of a D+T technician and teachers that I know well.

Anything from Aximinster, Warco, Chester etc is a backwards step IMO.

A couple of Myford Super 7 Connoisseurs would probably be your best option.

Dunno about Axminster but Warco and Chester both sell Industrial machines. I hope no-one thinks hobby machines made down to a price are the best that can be done, they're not. I'm not aware of any hobbyist spending £17k on a Chinese industrial lathe, or similar made around the world. Be interesting to have a play with one – I'd expect a £17k machine to be rather better than my £3000 economy model.

I assume the Myford Super 7 Connoisseur suggestion is a joke? Good lathes in the hands of a considerate machinist, but surely too delicate for trainees. Myfords were never popular in schools, who generally bought more robust kit.

Dave

Another industrial supplier that also supports education is XYZ. Not sure about cost but their manual trainer lathes may be appropiate

Manual Lathes

These wolud be more represenative than a mini-lathe if students are actually going into industry.
I was recently in the engineering department of a major UK university and they were using XYZ machines.
If it is just a general appreciation of using a lathe that is required than a larger "hobby" lathe may be OK.

Robert.

Tristan , The 600 Group web page is showing they still supply lathes to suit your purposes , though they not quoting any prices .

I've used a Warco geared head lathe in industry and despite my initial horror when told we were getting a Chinese machine I found it to be a good lathe. Certainly overcame my prejudices and I grew to regard it quite highly, used fairly heavily over a fairly long period it proved robust and accurate, certaily wouldn't mind one at home. We also had a Warco Bridgeport clone that was another robust reliable machine. I would imagine that the similar machines offered by other reputable and established importers would also be entirely satisfactory. Given the purchase price of these machines they seem remarkable value for money and ideally suited to school use.

The smaller lathes that Axminster sell are Sieg though not all of theirs.

There are other suppliers of Sieg lathes who are regarded as giving very good service on here but may not want to supply their lathes into an educational enviroment. I've a couple of their mills and am more than happy with what I can do on them, See the ARC advert top right of page

Edited By JasonB on 03/05/2023 13:13:09

Denford is also a UK based supplier of (CNC) machines to education.

Tristan,

I would suggest that you employ the services of a time served 'machine tool fitter', to recondition your existing machines. Would you suggest that your service engineer fits the bill?. By this I mean does he have the required skill or can he recommend an appropriate person/company who you can visit personally to verify and perform due diligence to ascertain that they posses required skills. i.e. visit their workshop to check how they recondition old Boxfords.

If you can manage the above, you maintain consistency in the way you train your students, and the students who are already using the Boxford can continue to carry on doing things as they have been trained.

ARC is a distributor of SIEG machines, but for education enquires we direct to AXMINSTER due to various reasons mentioned below:

A. Axminster are used to education requirements. If you decide to consider the SIEG SC4 lathe from them, consider buying the Lathework for Beginners link from ARC. In USA, there are a growing number of schools and collages installing the SC4 machines in their workshop – supplied by Little Machine Shop, who in turn purchase this book from us for supply to the schools/students. The technics in the book are universal, but the book has been written for a model brushless motor machine, and the machine used for this purpose is an SC4.

B. ARC, along with many schools and collages have (in my opinion) limited understanding of Health & Safety requirements… for example placement of E-Stop button / e-stop switches, central E-Stop mushrooms, correct guarding for machines. We have only supplied lathes to one school in Harrogate, and that was only after assessing all the risks with evidence of appropriate safety issues being addressed. The installation of all the lathes was successful. However, we refused to supply milling machines to the school in question, based on my own risk assessment for the machines they were intending to buy.

C. Most of the hobby machines we sell are ideal for the 'single user' environment. When there are more than one user using the same machine, there can be a basket of good, bad and ugly operators, resulting in correct use/abuse of machines. Here the level of after sales service combined with regular maintenance required goes up exponentially. This is usually reflected in the high price an education order would entail, combined with the school having a good maintenance program in place. This is outside the scope of ARCs business model.

Regardless of who you buy from, school/collage orders always carry a high price tag. Cost is not in the machine – it is always in the after sales maintenance program.

ARC is happy to supply products other than machines to schools and collages.

Ketan at ARC.

Edited By Ketan Swali on 03/05/2023 15:29:12