Hello from Cheshire, UK

Always hate these introduction things, anyway, I will do my best.
Started life as an electrical and electronics engineer and spent my working life in either electronics or metal bashing. Since retiring early I’ve been busy initially with wood working before starting to restore old iron wood working machines that led me into metal working.
With a good friend we’ve started to restore metal working machines, which is pushing me up a steep learning curve. Next is to venture into CNC, a mill and a lathe is in the horizon…….but not sure which and starting to do my research. These will replace a Colchester Student and a Bridgeport clone knee mill.

Hope to contribute a little and learn a lot.
John

Welcome aboard John.
I was born and raised in Cheshire (Wilmslow to be exact) but have now ended up in Tasmania. I too am a retired electronics engineer who has fallen down the rabbit hole of building a CNC router.
I'm sure you'll find what you want here.

Kit

Hi Kit, welcome to the forum Deema,

Deema, don't over look retro fitting the machines you may already have to cnc control :)

Thanks guys, I had wondered about a converting, and looking at the costs and also what the secondhand value would be when I come to sell the machines it does seem to be a costly route. I’ve been looking at Toolrroom size lathes such as the XYZ1640 and secondhand that are about 10~15 years old they seem to be around the same price as the kit to convert (selling my existing machine plus cost of conversation kit) so, I’m looking at going down that rabbit hole. I put a thread up about it hoping for the benefit of peoples experience (good, bad and the ugly) with a few lathes I’m looking at, unfortunately so far, it might be that nobody has.

Hi Deema

I have read many of your threads about restoring old green cast iron machines on ukworkshop, always a good read.
Hope you find the help you need on here.

Ollie