On Sat, 15 May 2004 04:05:49 GMT, "Steve Koschmann" wrote:
HI Group:

I attended the Inernational Hardware Show in Las Vegas this week saw a "new"
version of the Sakai ML 360 lathe and mill. This lathe was originally made
in Japan and got quite a bit of press in HSM with Rudy Kaughupt (sp??).

Rudy wrote several articles on the quality of the lathe and mill, and my
understanding was that the ML series was discontinued several years ago.
Why, I do not know. Price?????

Seem like a Korean manufacturer has picked up the rights and the tooling to
manufacture the lathe in Korea. They are looking to revisit the US market.

My question is has anyone in this newsgroup used the Sakai lathe, or have
any comments on it?

If I recall correctly, that lathe has always been a Korean made machine.
Darn nice one too. Sakai was just slapping their name on it. When Sakai
withdrew from the US market, the metric version of the machine remained
available in Europe for some time (maybe still is).

There have been rumors for a couple of years that the Koreans wanted to
directly market the inch version in the US, but there was some sort of problem
preventing them from doing so. I don't know what that was. Anyway, if they've
sorted that out and want to re-enter the US market with the inch version, I'm
sure there will be some flush hobby folks who want a classy mini-lathe, and it
certainly is that.

Gary