Cast iron/steel vs. aluminum vs. brass

[RaisedByWolves]

No. So few peeps have them. Parts are hard to find. They were plentiful and new between say 2005-15. Dave Sobel or his kid even had complete units. That may be who I got this off of. Afterwards they tried selling them for 350$ a pop sans motor. Wasn't a fulfilling matketing strategy.

Taig was making chucks for it for a spell. One M5 sold on ebay (searched completed) so there's some kind of interest out there.

There was 1 article in Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette years ago. 2 differemt articles in the Home Shop Machinist. Mostly fluff as I recall.

Yeah, they came in at a bad time for this sort of combo machine. The materials and design imo didn’t really appeal to people as much as more well established offerings, regardless of how well they worked or didn’t.

I kinda think the design was aimed at the Buck Roger’s crowd and may have been a little toy like on appearance for the time.

Only 30yrs or so before you could get a new craftsman/atlas that looked like a proper old school machine for not much more money.

Not bashing these at all, it’s just people trust tradition over “new n flashy” sometimes.

 

[skogkatt007]

It may be that they were identified with the pre 3 Unimats. They were around forever, and clearly quite popular. But their flaws were probably quite well known by the time the M5 was released.

The weakness of the M5 is the carriage. And somewhat the inordinately large drive shaft assembly. It was meant for occasional very light duty tasks. Appropriate for that. Anyone that had any experience with other larger lathes would tend to push it and probably become disappointed.

Personally I always thought it to have an classy space age look to it. Still don't know what LDM signifies (I may wind up feeling stupid momentarily). If I had to guess I'd say it was German language acronym.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

It may be that they were identified with the pre 3 Unimats. They were around forever, and clearly quite popular. But their flaws were probably quite well known by the time the M5 was released.

The weakness of the M5 is the carriage. And somewhat the inordinately large drive shaft assembly. It was meant for occasional very light duty tasks. Appropriate for that. Anyone that had any experience with other larger lathes would tend to push it and probably become disappointed.

Personally I always thought it to have an classy space age look to it. Still don't know what LDM signifies (I may wind up feeling stupid momentarily). If I had to guess I'd say it was German language acronym.

No idea why the headstock was so massive nor what LDM stands for.