I own a legacy Oramental Mill. Most of my turning is done on this device with a router. The time has come that I need a lathe along with the mill. Most of my turning will be for spindles. I would very much like to use the lathe to learn bowl turning. A friend suggested I get the Oneway 1640. It seems to me that Lathe is way overpriced. Is the OneWay worth the money? Any opinions on Powermatic lathes? Any suggestions on other lathes that I might be happy with would sure be appreciated. My budget is $3000 or less although $2000 would be ideal.
I noticed these lathes weight between 600 and 1000 pounds. Can they be taken apart to get them into a basement shop?
Many retired people subscribing to this groups have worked all their live in industries and have great knowledge and practical experience about machine design. Having said that I wonder what would be the cost of materiel to build a prototype resembling the Oneway lathe?
I have a Oneway 2436 with a 2 hp. Love that rascal. Check Bernie Mares "Serious Lathe" and the Vicmarks. Both are quality machines, just not up to the Oneways, course, a lot cheaper too.
Almost any lathe will do an acceptable job of spindle turning if it has enough swing and enough length and enough power. The Oneway Lathes are excellent and youpay for that excellence. For what you want to do, a Nova 3000 or a Nova DVR
3000 with enough bed extensions to handle your spindle length needs would be an excellent choice. Either of them would also handle you bowl turning needs if you become hooked on bowl turning. I had a Nova 3000 for several years and now have a Nova DVR 3000 with an added on bed extension. Gives me a 16" swing over the bed and 44" between centers with about a two horsepower motor to power everything.
I've done some machine design work in the past and when I first saw the price on th Oneway, I wondered just that, so here goes...
Not counting the motor/drive...because I don't know exactly what the oneway has...and you know someone with a fabricating shop that won't rape you, since this is gonna be a one-off thing...
Material is going to set you back about $350usd for the bed/ways/leg assembly. Steel in question is 3/16" (for the bed tube) and 1/4" (for the legs and braces) steel plate, nothing fancy, just hot or cold rolled steel and a couple of bars of 5/8"x3 ground steel bar for the ways.
A fabricating shop is going to charge you about $100 to $200 or so(plus coffee and donuts or maybe a case or two of beer) for the cutting, bending and rolling. These are ballpark prices that a fab shop in southern Wisconsin gave me about this exact project a year ago. The guy that runs the shop owes me a favor or two, but not enough to cut his price too much. And I'd have had ALL the engineering done already and would have been sweating right along side him while doing the work.
The spindle is going to cost you about $100 to make on the cheap or $250 to do it right and the tailstock is going to cost about $150.
So all told, I'd guess you're looking at about $1100 plus the cost of the motor/drive.
For the drives, a step pulley set-up is gonna run you about $100 for a 6 speed and about $250 for a Reeves VS set-up and a 2 hp motor should go for about $150-$175 which brings the grand total up to biting the hell out of $1600.
These numbers are not just pulled out of my a$$, but they are NOT to be taken as a firm quote, either...call them educated guesses that should be pretty close.
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