CNC Lathe Advice

Hi,

I am a new joiner to MyCNCUK and have mainly joined to get some advice and information on CNC lathes.

Myself and my Dad are working on a company idea to manufacture mountain bike components. We are starting with headsets which contain two bearings and allow the forks to freely move in the bike frame when the handlebars are turned.

We have completed our designs in Fusion360 and have prototyped and refined using a 3D printer and are now ready to turn to machining in aluminium alloy (2014 T6 or 7075 T6 depending on the part.)

After approaching several large and small CNC prototyping companies we have concluded that we will quickly burn through cash prototyping all the parts we need given that there are 3 headset standards and two main bearing sizes we have to accommodate. Therefore given that we are now pretty well versed on Fusion360 and its modules then we have decided that we should try and prototype the parts ourselves using a legacy teaching lathe which we will likely buy and then convert to Mach3.

From the research we have done the Denford ORAC or Boxford TCL 125 (with automatic tool changers) would appear to be good candidates for the job but we would be grateful for any further advice or options the community here might offer?