Do Hobby Machinists prefer small CNC or small Manual machines at home?

[Aaron_W]

My perception differs from yours, I'd say.

Now grant you, I'm in the UK, which is a very different market; much more urbanised than the States and largely due to this, many people would struggle these days to change a fuse in a plug, let alone even recognise what a lathe looks like; our whole culture has pretty much totally forgotten its industrial heritage. Also, here in the UK, our property plots sizes are much smaller. If a property even has a garage (many older smaller houses, say terraced 2 bed properties don't have them, and new 3 bed properties are being built without) it is often a small 1 car garage.

One of, if not the first, things that comes into my mind when looking at a machine is, can I fit this in my workshop and if it will fit, how easy will it be to get it from where it is to my kerbside and then into my workshop.

Then where would it go? My workshop is in a 1.5 car garage. Note the word 'in'; about a third is given over to acting as a garden shed, since my garden doesn't have the space for one. With a small lathe (I have a little 7x but it's in a space that will take a Boxford, Colchester Bantam/Chipmaster, Harrison L5/M300) mill (RF-25 type), band saw (5"), grinding bench and workbench, I'm pretty much at capacity.

I would dearly love a surface grinder and honestly, at any given time, I can go on eBay, FBM, or one of the used machine tool dealers and find, oh say, at least 3 tidy looking Jones and Shipmans for betwen around £600 - £900.

But they're kinda on the heavy side and pretty bulky so I'd have to arrange loading and transport (if doing it myself, I'd need to hire a hiab and learn how to palletise and rig properly). Then there's the task of getting it from the kerbside into my workshop. That's a pallet truck hire and a potentially 'exciting' afternoon's work.

Then, since most larger kit tends to be three phase (another reason the demand for many larger industrial machines is low in the hobby market), there's getting a VFD or RPC sorted.

So a bunch of cost, hassle and potential safety issues.

I would guess the situation for hobbyists in the States is probably a lesser version of the above. Maybe space restraints are less of an issue and many will have access to a pickup truck and forklifts. Still and all, it would give many people pause

Based on the machines and written material (admittedly biased as an English speaker) it seems to me the Hobby Machinist / Model Engineer space is heavily dominated by the USA and UK* markets. Looking at the classic hobby machines Atlas, South Bend, Logan, Seneca Falls, Myford, Boxford, Adept, Drummond etc shows the influence with most of the companies offering "hobbyist" machines pre-WW2 and some going back as far as the late 1890s.

With the exception of Emco (particularly the Unimat) in Austria it seems like most of the hobby sized lathes from other countries have been either intended for professional use and very expensive (Swiss, German or Japanese) or they were made primarily for export (Taiwan, Korea and China).

*Austrailia / New Zealand are a special case. Clearly they also have a strong history with hobby machines, but being rather isolated they have kind of gone their own way with many home grown suppliers. Because of distance much less import or export of hobby machines. Of course these days it is almost all Asian machines, like everywhere.


Your description of the typical UK hobbyist shop seems like it would apply to European hobbyists as well, while Australia and Canada seem to fall more towards the USA with more space available. Of course city dwellers almost always have more space issues than those in the countryside regardless of country. The description of your shop could easily apply to a shop in New York City, Chicago, LA, Toronto etc.
This has me thinking of the member with a Logan 10" lathe in a New York City apartment, moving a 500lb machine into a basement is one thing, I've never even given thought to moving one to the 19th floor. I hope the elevator works.

 

[Boswell]

I started with a small benchtop manual mill and then sold it when I bought a larger benchtop CNC mill. I do miss the manual machine occasionally for very quick easy cuts. My thought is that a CNC can do anything a manual machine can pretty easily, but a manual machine (while it probably can do anything a CNC can, it takes a lot more work in many cases. For instance, I don't have a rotary table. I can do arcs and straight cuts in the same setup using the CNC.

 

[682bear]

I operate CNC machinery at work... I don't wish to do the same at home.

I started buying manual machines for my home shop when I realized that I had been running CNC for so long that I was forgetting how to use manual machines...

That bothered me... so I became a hobby machinist at home.

-Bear

 

[matthewsx]

@ps15toolroom

So, your competition in this space is Tormach. Have you evaluated their offerings? Just curious how what you’re proposing matches up to them?

John

 

[twhite]

I operate CNC machinery at work... I don't wish to do the same at home.

I started buying manual machines for my home shop when I realized that I had been running CNC for so long that I was forgetting how to use manual machines...

That bothered me... so I became a hobby machinist at home.

-Bear

I have the same experience as you. Started in 1980 on manual machines. Then in 1999 I got thrown into CNC. About 2-1/2 years ago I started getting my home Hobby Shop setup. All manual for your same exact reason. Manual machining is far more satisfying to me.
Don’t get me wrong. Designing, programming and running CNC’s for plastic injection molds then prototyping was fun. But nowhere as rewarding as making stuff on a manual machine.

By the way I have a new job where I stand at a manual lathe 10 hours a day. I haven’t been so happy at work in years. I look forward to going to work each day. How lucky am I!


Cutting oil is my blood.

 

[Advil]

I have spent 6-7 years acquiring my machines. Im one of the new breed probably. Started out CNC on my Tormach 770 which steers by keyboard exceptionally well for manual work, and more recently got an already CNC converted 1440 lathe that works both manually and CNC. My personal opinion, even though I have quite a bit of space, is that given a choice id rather have CNC capability even if very basic on every machine so I can tackle whatever the need is.

The one thing that Tormach really spoiled me on was how easily you can drive a CNC mill manually when you can hook up a keyboard, set the feed rate on screen, and just drive the thing with the arrow keys. No cranking on wheels and instant response. Frankly I love it and I wish all CNC controls could do that so well. Pendants and jog wheels are NOT the same or as fast and I can move in 3 axis directions at once if desired in real time. 45 degree Diagonal cuts in XY by holding both arrow keys down works perfect.

But I'm from the PC gaming generation so that type of control is completely natural to me.

 

[Aaron_W]

As to the OPs question, personally I feel like the biggest gap for hobby machines is in the 5-9" size lathe.

There are several good quality very small lathes available in the under 5" class with Taig / Peatol, Sherline, Cowells, and for those with deep pockets Levin. Sherline and Taig also cover the CNC side quite well in this size class.

In the 9" and larger size there are many options, from the decent budget options starting around $1100 (Grizzly G4000) to wheel barrow loads of cash (Hardinge HLV and clones).

From 5-9" though while there are many options, they tend to be variations of the infamous 7" mini-lathe. There really are not many modern equivalents to the Atlas 6" and 10", Emco Compact 5, Prazzi SD300 / SD400, Logan 9 / 10", or South Bend 9 / 10K.


I think a real problem is how big is the market for a good quality lathe in this size class?

The Myford Super 7 is still being sold, but they cost more than $5000, well into the Chinese 12x36 price range.

Little Machine Shop offers the Model 7500 (appears to be based on the Sieg SC4) which seems to be a very nice 8.5x20" lathe, but the price of $2700 it puts it within a couple hundred dollars of the higher end 10x22 lathes (example PM1022). For that you get a lathe 140lbs lighter (220lbs vs 360lbs) and only 4" shorter (40" vs 44"). The person that 4" of length and 140lbs makes a difference too is pretty much the definition of a niche market.

Grizzly has offered several high quality "South Bend" lathes in 8x18", 9.8x28" and 10-3/4x30" sizes. They were not cheap, so presumably did not sell well enough since all have been dropped from Grizzly's catalog. To give you some idea of pricing, the largest of these was the last to go. The 1007 "Heavy 10", a 10-3/4x30" lathe that carried a price tag of $9500 in 2023.

For some historical context and maybe help establish what the hobby market will pay we can look at some popular vintage lathes. I don't think it is too controversial to claim the Atlas 6 and 10" lathes and and South bend 9" are solid examples of the small hobby lathes of the past. Atlas representing the budget end and SB the higher end. These sold well to hobbyists from the 1930s into the 1970s.

Adjusted for inflation the Atlas 618 sold for the equivalent of $2200, the Atlas TH42 10x24 for $3000 (change gear) to $3800 (QCGB) and the South Bend 9 $3700 (9C) to $5400 (9A).


People do seem to like cheap, but I think the other problem in this class is there have been so many good quality lathes made in the past, that can be found on the used market.
There are some very high quality vintage tool makers lathes with an 8-11" swing from makers like Schaublin, Hardinge, Wade, Rivett. With some patience and luck nice examples can be found in the $2000-10000 range, and these are going to blow away any modern made lathe in that price range. Does anybody seriously want to debate the quality of a vintage Swiss made lathe with a modern Taiwan or Chinese lathe?


There may be more room in the CNC market but that is not something I have much interest or knowledge of.

 

[wrmiller]

I've noticed that small manual machines and accessories are much more desirable on ebay and at auction as opposed to stuff over 2000 lbs. A small high quality vintage mill will go for over $1000 while a 5000 lbs mill just goes for scrap. Clearly this is because people want something they can put in their garage or basement.
Now for my hypothetical question.
Suppose a company began making new compact and high quality machine tools specifically with home shop people in mind. Would you prefer CNC machines or Manual machines? Can the machines be compact yet heavy (not exceeding 2000 lbs)? Or do the machines need to be both compact and lighter weight? Do you need to make money or just have fun?
Me personally, I'm not put off by weight. If I had machine with a small work envelope but was made heavy so you still get rigidity and vibration damping I wouldn't mind. I'd also prefer something CNC or a hybrid design of manual with 2/3 axis conversational control.
Interested in hearing from you all

I do pistolsmithing and other projects that require lots of one-off things being machined. Because of this, I have zero interest in CNC. Before I got sick, I had a PM935 mill and PM 1340GT lathe and were very satisfied with the capabilities of both.

 

[Advil]

It's always interesting to hear the different sides of it even for the same uses.

Custom rifle, shotgun and pistol work and repair is what has helped make the extra bucks that helped me buy the machines I have. Without CNC I couldn't realistically make the parts in decent time frames, one offs included as many times they aren't simple part shapes.

Standard gunsmithing tasks yes absolutely manual is fine , but the stuff I wanted for myself which is how it got started and that now other people want me to do and fix today, I have to have CNC capability.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

Both!

Most of my work is one or two parts that I can use the manual machine faster than programing and setting up the CNC. (Usually, there are exceptions) If I have to make enough parts, I would use my CNC. The CNC does however open up some interesting possibilities though, like engraving and arced slots. (I don't have the appropriate rotary table for arced slots)

Bottom line, if you can only have one, I would go with the manual mill.

Richard

I’m old school when it comes to my preference for manual machines.
I do a lot of one and two offs.
I can preform the machining process before I could ever program them.
I’m a huge fan of CNC technology, i just have trepidation in falling down another rabbit hole

I have this conversation with my nephew often. He has "some" manual skills and I have "some" CNC skills, but I would say he has more manual than I have CNC, which is understandable.

Last time we talked about this is was over an extension sleeve for his flashlight that allowed him to use a larger battery. a 1" dia by 3/4" tube, threaded internally on one end and externally on the other.

He was pointing out some changes he would like to make and I asked him how long it took to make this.

He said 10min. No, it did not take 10min was my reply.

We hashed it out for a bit and came up with one hour- for programming and such, this with the machine having a fully stocked 50 tool carousel.

When I told him I would make it in roughly the same time and not have to remake the whole thing to add the changes he didn't want to believe it, so I walked him through the steps, setup and and tooling changes I needed to do.

Chuck material and clean up face and bring outside to size, and size for external thread. Hog out internal dimension to near finished size with drill and finish with a boring bar pass.

Were at 10min at this point and half way done.

Cut external thread to include setting up lathe, another 15 min.

Flip part and bring internal dimension to size for threading, 10min.

Cut internal thread, another 15min.

This is being generous with time for ancillary things like picking your nose or sipping coffee, and he still couldn't understand.

I explained it to him like this, on one side you have low buy in costs and a steep learning curve to learn to do things manually, but you develop a huge library of knowledge in perfecting the art of manual machining.

OTOH, you have a huge initial buy in cost, still have a comparable learning curve to learn cad, still need to develop the tooling inventory, only at an advanced pace and will use more in materials in the long run testing out and perfecting programs.

For onesies and twosies manual has a huge advantage.