On Aug 30, 10:06*am, Sevenhundred Elves
wrote:
On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:19:15 -0700 (PDT),

wrote:

I would "waste my time" on this because it's my life's work, and I
have made time to do it. Yes, I do plan to buy an entire set of
replacement parts. I plan on exploring all five options.

In that case, the Hommel, or something like that, might interest you.
The way I figure it, the Hommel can make replicas of each part of
itself except the castings, which are cast, not machined, but some
slight design changes could allow you to use milled steel parts
instead of the castings. Also, the bed of the Hommel is too big to be
conveniently milled on the bed of the Hommel, at least it looks that
way to me. But if you have TWO Hommels, you might somehow stick their
beds together end-to-end to allow bigger work.

Here's a link to the Hommel:

http://www.lathes.co.uk/hommel/
.....
Yes, I asked the site's adminitrator, Tony Griffiths, to separate out
the universal machines with a header "Combination Machines", at
http://www.lathes.co.uk/index.html, and the Hommel is listed there,
abou t75% into the page as you scroll down. It is a candidate for self-
reproduction, and so are all the other universal machines listed
there. I gaze at those photos for hours thinking of configuring the
subject machine to make a part of itself. Ideally, I'd have a zillion
dollars and one of each of those universal machines to evaluate.
Practically, I have the Super Shop only, and Autocad Inventor LT 2009,
the demo edition. Big gap.

Doug