Looking for some advise on mill and lathe

[FlaMtnBkr]

I have wanted a lathe for awhile and found a older gentleman pretty desperate to get rid of some stuff before he moves at the end of the month.

To start I'll admit I know nothing about this kind of equipment and have never used a mill or a lathe.

I was hoping to get some feedback as to the quality of this equipment and what a fair price might be (or maybe another forum that I could ask the same questions?). The guy said all the stuff is 8 years old and only really used consistantly for 2 years. Everything has digital readouts and the mills have servo power feed. Tooling comes with it but I am not sure what there is since I have not seen anything in person yet. I can tell the lathe has about 24 collets sitting next to it.

Larger mill: Alliant made by Enco. Knee mill with 10x54 table. Air collet changer.

Smaller mill: Turnpro made by Enco. 9x49 table.

Lathe: He says the lathe is made by Nova but being an older gentleman I am thinking it just has some Nova parts on it and he read the name off them. All the nova stuff I have seen are smaller wood lathes. This is a pretty big beast in comparison and has a 13" swing with 40" between centers. I'll try to find out the maker and post back.

Also, the mills run on three phase. I only have single phase 220. He said that is what he has and he uses a rotary converter (said it costs about $800 new) to power them and it works fine and he will throw it in with the purchase. Anyone have experience with this and know if it works well?

I know this is a knife forum but I figured some of you makers would have some experience with the stuff and might be able to comment. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I do have pictures but I will have to resize them and set up a pic hosting page to show them. If the pics will help I will get them up.

Thanks!

Ryan

 

[gspam1]

Ryan:

First, using a rotary converter to power 3-phase equipment is an excellent way to go.

There isn't any good way for someone to tell you what the equipment is worth without seeing it. 8 years on a well maintained machine tool is not a lot, but it depends on how it was used. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Look for similar new equipment in the Enco catalog to see what brand new would cost you. The "brands" are probably irrelevant and the Taiwanese and Chinese stuff have all kinds of brand labels.

2. Inspect the equipment to see how worn it is. You can find lots of information on the web about this. Just google "buying used machine tools" or something like that. You'll also find the dedicated machinist sites that way too.

3. Look on the machine tag for where the machine was manufactured. Generally, Taiwan is a couple of cuts above mainland China in quality.

4. Search eBay for what similar machines have sold for. eBay prices will tend to be higher than most things bought locally.

Here's a couple of machinist board links:

http://www.homeshopmachinist.net/bbs/

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi

George

 

[btboone]

I have an older Enco mill. I bought it new and tried to take fairly good care of it. It's all about how it's been taken care of. Either it's the little old lady taking angel hair passes in aluminum on Sundays, or it was being abused daily on steel I -beam parts and high horsepower cuts. Finding out what he used them for might go a long way into finding out the real condition of the machines.

I used to use a rotary phase converter, which works fine. I've also use a cheaper solid state one, which also worked fine. The mill took a second to get up to full speed with that. I now have a Phase Perfect digital phase converter which powers my CNC machines. It's tons more expensive, but unlike with the others, the legs are perfectly matched. They say that the output is even better than the 3 phase power straight from the utilities. I love mine.