Thinking about a Clarke CL430...

[cropwell]

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