"Ignoramus8699" wrote in message
...
Pictures are he

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Monarch-vs-Polamco/

Right now, my "shop lathe" is a Monarch model AA 16x54 lathe. The
amazing thing about it is that it is almost brand new (!!!) and has
no
wear whatsoever. I know that it is weird, but it is true. Somehow or
other, it escaped the usual fate of these lathes, it was made in
1944.

It has only two problems:

1) It is slow, top speed is 500 RPM
2) Someone told me that the lubrication system in the head may not
be
working right, based on what he saw in the sight glass.

I recently purchased a AFM Toolmex or Polamco lathe. It has about
the
same size, and its top speed is a respectable 1,600 RPM. It does
have
wear, unlike the Monarch, but very little. It also has a removable
gap, which we do not care for too much.

There is two people in my shop who use a lathe, me and another guy.
I
told him that we can now pick the lathe out of these two.

So, I wanted to solicit some opinions as to what lathe is better. I
know that I can get good money for either of them, so money is not
the
issue.

Another option is to keep the Monarch and add a small Hardinge HC
for
working on small stuff at high speed. I bought three small hardinges
for $200 each two weeks ago.

I will appreciate some intelligent comments. Thanks

i

I read a comparison between the Hardinge HLV and the South Bend 10L
that concluded the South Bend was a better choice for general
non-critical work because of its geater versatility and back-gearing
that allows heavy cuts on large diameters. The author had used both at
the National Bureau of Standards shop. The Hardinge was better for
precision threading but not decisively so. He (and I) valued 5C
collets and low speed torque more than the name on the machine.

I designed an optical instrument that required #0-80 (~1.5mm)
Fillister head screws almost 1" long due to very limited space, they
straddled a lens thread in stacked modules that had to align with a
glued-together array of 10mm cube optics.
http://www.lambda.cc/high-power-lase...litters-hpb-2/

I turned the prototype screws in one piece on my SB, but the shop that
filled the order on a Hardinge attached separate heads to shanks.made
of 1/16" rod.

-jsw