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Posted by on August 27, 2006, 7:20 am
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ha (nospam) wrote:
> Will be building a 4" Little Samson traction engine & 7.1/4" 0-4-0
> loco.
> Anyone have any suggestions please as to what to buy.
> Went to the Ally Pally Exhibition beginning of the year and looked at
> Warco/Chester.
> Will be going to the Warwich Exhibition to make final decision.
> Am looking at:
> lathes - BH900 or 1232. I like the possibility of using the 900 belt
> drive as improvised clutch by raising and lowering the motor?
Geoff Hi, the BH900 is a long bed version of the BH600 and there has
been much discussion on this lathe on this forum, if you do a search on
BH600 you will see many opinions of this machine. I have one and find
it to be an accurate and reliable machine. I have not used the belt as
a clutch although it was covered in one of the articles on the machine
either in Model Engineer or Model Engineers Workshop. When I did this
mod on a Myford I used to have I found it difficult to get a smooth
pickup and experienced a lot of belt snatching at the point of drive. I
don't think I would make it a deciding factor if I was going to buy a
new machine. Although I spent a lot of time looking at the 1232 I
eventually chose the BH600 because I like belt drive, it was a very
close run thing however and it seems to be a fine machine.
There are of course many secondhand machines in this sort of price
range if you know enough about picking a "goodun". The scale you are
building means that you will need a fairly large machine (in ME terms)
and I'm not sure if a 5" machine like a Bantum/Chipmaster would be
large enough so you would be looking a a Student or 2500 type
Colchester. The Harrison machines are also well regarded and a 300
might do very nicely. Don't forget that machines of this size are
expensive to equip so make sure if you buy secondhand it comes with
chucks, steadies etc. One advantage of the new import route is that
they are usually supplied with some basic equipment.
> milling - GH-Universal, Super Major? or VMC
Again, if you do a search on this site you will find plenty of
information about these machines. The VMC seems well regarded but is a
bit limited in size, I had planned to get one but in the end got a
Bridgeport which I still need to put together.
> Would love a Bridgeport, but height to roof supports is 2100mm.
Pity as the BRJ stands 2145mm tall and the BR2J2 2255, might be worth
seeing if you can position it between supports for a bit extra room but
don't forget you need room for a drawbar as well. Although at a push
you can swing the head over to remove that if necessary.
Geoff, you need to make sure that you have a good idea of the minimum
size machine that will do the necessary for you and maybe let us know
what sort of budget you envisage and I'm sure you will get some more
specific recommendations.
Best regards
Keith
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> loco.
> Anyone have any suggestions please as to what to buy.
> Went to the Ally Pally Exhibition beginning of the year and looked at
> Warco/Chester.
> Will be going to the Warwich Exhibition to make final decision.
> Am looking at:
> lathes - BH900 or 1232. I like the possibility of using the 900 belt
> drive as improvised clutch by raising and lowering the motor?