Anyone had any experience with this?

Personally, I would run like the wind in the opposite direction. But, that's just me. The description of the machine calls it the Chicago Lathe American Bridgemill. If you go to the Chicago Lathe website, you’ll find their corporate office address in Chicago. Here’s a snapshot from Google maps of their corporate office, FWIW.

Tom

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looks like a good place to hang out, waving a stack of $100 bills. probably will get the same for your dollar to just slip it out the window while driving down the road
 
Pretty much the same machine. I have a Shoptask 1720 from the early 90s then they came out with the Bridgemill and also the Shopmaster name I'm thinking they have had a name change again. That said my machine has given me pretty good service with a little tweaking here and there. not the most ridged machine out there but it works.
 
Thanks. You know what they say, if it looks too good to be true... But I couldn't find it on the site, so I thought I'd ask.
 
noticed that all the info for the older machines is gone. That's a shame in my opinion because i think they have quite a few older machines out there, and to me that might be a real good indication of how they feel about support of those machines.
 
Are you interested in a CNC machine like this or would two separate machines work? I think knowing what i know now about my 3in1 unless you have no extra space for individual machines i would buy a lathe and a mill and cnc each one. Note i have no CNC experience
 
tweinke said:
Are you interested in a CNC machine like this or would two separate machines work? I think knowing what i know now about my 3in1 unless you have no extra space for individual machines i would buy a lathe and a mill and cnc each one. Note i have no CNC experience
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I'm probably going to end up with a separate lathe and mill. Struggling with the normal three things: size, budget and new vs used. I don't have my shop yet, so not really in a hurry. I bought a 3d printer and am re-learning CAD software to make small parts, mechanical puzzles etc. Eventually would like to do these projects in steel, brass and aluminum.

Intuitively (i.e. the way that I currently think) a mill seems more useful for the things I've been designing. I wonder if a mill with a 4th axis might do 70-80% of the things I would otherwise do on a lathe, but I don't know.

I will probably go with a manual machine to learn on, and someday convert to CNC, at least for the mill. I think I would want a DRO and powerfeeds on the mill right away though. For the lathe, I think manual would be fine. I would love to buy a knee mill in the 9x39 size range, with a variable speed head. For the lathe, I would like something between 12 x 36 and 14 x 40. So it's the typical problem, I want about $15,000 worth of machinery and have a budget of about half that...
 
My Shoptask 1720 xmtc has a very similar work envelope to the two machines you started off with here. That said the lathe portion is fairly decent but not being cnc. the mill is another story. not very ridged work envelope is very small once you add a vise and tool. I bought a PM 727m mill to have a better envelope and am very happy with it. PM machines are well supported by Quality Machine Tools. I do not foresee me ever going CNC though. If i had it to do all over it would have been separate machines. You can do decent work on a 3in1 with good planning though, and I would have never got a start machining with out it.
 
Manual lathe, CNC mill.

Hard to go wrong with the PM units it seems, I don't have one yet but keep looking at their website....

John
 
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