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- Dec 3, 2013
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I have seen/run one of those lathe/mill machines (Not Smithy) in person and it had one motor and a transmission to switch between lathe and mill. It was very loose and full of vibration due to the transmission. For that reason if you go this route try to get something with a separate motor for lathe and mill.
The closet machine to the smithy that had separate motors was the ShopMaster. The last version was the Patriot. They have since gone all CNC and as far as I know the manual version is no longer available. A friend of mine did a rigidity test on both machines and the results were almost identical. The patriot used an overhead gantry for the mill head vs. the round column of the Smithy.
One thing to consider is the new price of the Smithy Imax 1340 From what I can see $4500 to $5000. With that budget you could have two good quality separate machines. Or else with that budget could consider something beside Smithy 3 in 1 for similar price but more precision tool. For example and I just typed in "Lathe mill combo" on eBay.com to get this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-11-x-28...694810?hash=item3ac87c55da:g:pvoAAOSwZVlXkpRW
I have a good friend with a Griz lathe similar to the one linked to above and found the milling capacity/rigidity to be far less than the Smithy with the mill column being bolted to the lathe bed. A standard lathe V bed does also not have the same rigidity for milling as a dovetail bed.