Thinking about a Clarke CL430...

Hello all,

I've fancied a lathe for a while and now that I've got myself a small unit and a bit of (rapidly shrinking) extra space, I've started to think about it a bit more seriously.

It's not going to be getting loads of use, but when I do use it I want to get decent results. I'm happy to take the time to learn and go the long way around - not expecting 6mm DOC at 200mm/sec or anything like that.

Having had a look around, this little Clarke seems to get consistently good reviews - it's not a steal at that price, but it's affordable:

https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/cl430-metal-lathe/

Any opinions, other recommendations or advice?

Wal.

<deleted - pointless reply without experience of the Clarke>

They are a pretty capable lathe, and hard to beat in terms of capability for price, but they're far from perfect.

I've had a CL500 (the milling head lives under the bench, as it was only ever fitted for a couple months) for well over 10 years now, and it gets regular use.
I machined a new support block with two AC bearings for the z-axis leadscrew, as the original bushing setup was rubbish.
The x-axis has a similarly rubbish thrust setup, but it's workable. I keep meaning to fit a longer grubscrew with a either a locknut or a bit Loctite so it might actually stay adjusted.
I could never get the saddle to adjust with minimal play and no binding (you'd tighten the gib, then it would bind when trying to move it, yet still wobble about), until I finally stripped it and found the gib strip was bowed. Replacing it with a suitable bit gauge plate solved that problem.
The change gear setup really is a PITA to use if you want to do threading.
Changing belts is also a bit a nuisance.

Biggest improvement I done to mine was fit DROs.

Have you looked at the lathes from Amadeal Wal?

https://www.amadeal.co.uk/acatalog/Lathes.html

Have you considered second hand?, not for everybody, but I'm pretty sure that Wal can eyeball a lathe with more confidence and authority than many.

There's a lot of old iron on flea-bay, some of it reasonably close to you. A decent (but old!) lathe will likely give you at least as good performance if not better than a Chinese knockoff and likely come with a lot of the additional tooling that would otherwise add so much on top of the Clarke ticket price. It'd possibly be imperial (no big shakes), and may need more imagination to transport, but for bang-per-buck you should at least take a peek.

Have to agree with Doddy on this one.
I purchased a new Emcomat 7L 40 year ago, only because i couldn't afford one of these.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Maximat-V...UAAOSws59dKLjn

Cheers guys. Some food for thought there.

Yep, I've considered second hand - it's being in the right place at the right time and knowing exactly what you're looking at with that market. When it comes to lathes I'm a total newb, that's not to say I wouldn't have a go at cleaning up and fettling something that's had a run - so long as it's not a basket case!

Thank you all for your advice thus far, I'll keep you posted...

Wal.

I have the Amadeal 290-VFF, so out of interest I had a look at the other offerings from Amadeal and they seem to have retracted their catalogue somewhat. There are others that sell the same chinese machines under different badges, Warco for instance.

Wal, the size of lathe you seem to be looking for is often sold off from colleges. They have little wear and can be undamaged apart from where the little sods set the toolpost on an autofeed journey towards the chuck and then walk away. So Autofeed is often disabled.

I have the Clarke CL300, which is the only experience I have of Clarke Lathes, and it is a pretty amateurish job, I think the slideways need scraping to get them true as adjustment is damn near impossible to get rid of the slop without binding. The CMD10, which I also have, is the same but worse.

At one time, it was possible to get a lathe from ArcEuro and a proper engineer like Hobnob would set it up. Maybe worth looking at their offerings and chatting to them.

Cheers,

Rob-T