Atlas 101.21400 used w/accessories, $1,500, plan to buy... thoughts?

[wa5cab]

Well, some of the items on your list probably have a lower than $100 average used price. And I would probably only count one of anything on the list that there is more than one of. And don't count anything that you don't think you will ever use unless you think that you can fairly easily re-sell it. But that is the only way to fairly compare this offering to any other. Including new.

Also, I meant to mention earlier that one of the tailstock chucks has the correct type of arbor and another one still has the tang on it. If that happens to be the chuck that you want to use in the tailstock, I would cut the tang off and grind it flat to match the length of the tang-less one. You will gain about 3/8" of usable ram travel. Otherwise, only use the tanged one in the drill press. And/or re-sell it.

 

[skcncx]

Just for my reference... what's a reasonable depth of cut on aluminum for the Atlas 618? Is a .015 (1/64th) reasonable and inline with this thing? No prior experience, so that may be way too deep of a single cut.

 

[mmcmdl]

For a reference , there was a 618 up at Cabin Fever in excellant shape , I mean it looked brand new . A bit of tooling came with it , not much . It did not move at $450 . I should've picked it up because I stared at it for at least an hour . I thought it was a great little lathe for the price . If you do a Cabin Fever search you'll see the pics of the lathe , and good luck with yours also . I think they're cool .

 

[Doug Gray]

Just my 2 cents based on original post.

• You will wish you had a lead screw gearbox as opposed to change gears.
• you will want to work with steel

However any lathe is better than no lathe

 

[francist]

Just for my reference... what's a reasonable depth of cut on aluminum for the Atlas 618?

0.015” is easily achievable in 6061 aluminum on the 618. With mine I consider up to 0.010” as finishing or light surfacing cuts; 0.010” to 0.015” as a medium depth for stock removal; and 0.015” to 0.020” as a heavy cut. In steel, drop those numbers by about 40 percent. I have carbide but use HSS almost exclusively. Note the above numbers are on the radius (depth of cut) not diameter reduction.

 

[skcncx]

Just my 2 cents based on original post.

• You will wish you had a lead screw gearbox as opposed to change gears.
• you will want to work with steel

However any lathe is better than no lathe

Understood on the "will want to work with steel"... as far as gearbox vs change gears, that's primarily just important for threading those??... I've been under the impression that a lot of lathe people still resort to tap and die for thread cutting anyway. So I wasn't putting to much stock in that... other than a gear box would be nice to have.

 

[skcncx]

For a reference , there was a 618 up at Cabin Fever in excellant shape , I mean it looked brand new . A bit of tooling came with it , not much . It did not move at $450 . I should've picked it up because I stared at it for at least an hour . I thought it was a great little lathe for the price . If you do a Cabin Fever search you'll see the pics of the lathe , and good luck with yours also . I think they're cool .

Well, when I hear those prices, the $1500 hurts. What I'm checking out today is an hour drive... any further and I just wouldn't care. I know he's throwing in a bunch of material which is helpful... but I think it's coming down to, he want's his price including EVERYTHING... but in reality, a lot of what I'll get in the package will go unused... as other's have remarked on.

 

[Doug Gray]

It also controls the speed of your autofeed, for example you will want one rate for roughing passes (higher feed rate) than want to slow feed down for finishing passes. Haveing to fiddle with the gears for this is a PITA. just my $0.02.

 

[skcncx]

It also controls the speed of your autofeed, for example you will want one rate for roughing passes (higher feed rate) than want to slow feed down for finishing passes. Haveing to fiddle with the gears for this is a PITA. just my $0.02.

Right. I can easily see how I wouldn't change and sacrifice surface quality or speed in rouging because it's a pain to change and you don't or you do and it's a pain to change.

 

[skcncx]

I think my plan is, pick this Atlas 618 up, even if it's a bit high on the price, get going, see how much I use it, find out what I really need... and if I upgrade...I'm just going to jump to a Precision Matthews 10" x 22" or 30" or the largest LMS 8.5 x 20 one... those are just around the $4K mark. Even if I sell this package in a year for $1K, lose $500, if I've used it enough to know and want/need a bigger lathe, that's cheap in the long run to have the learning under my belt.. vs spend $4k day one with hardly any tooling and find out I didn't really need it.

We'll see how my negotiating skills work, hoping to at least get him down to $1,250 at the worst.