On Sat, 09 Jul 2005 09:42:46 -0700, Felice Luftschein and Nicholas
Carter wrote:

The Taig is more rigid than the old unimat SL, that's for sure.
If you have a Levin I wouldn't bother with a Taig unless you want
another lathe - you can do much more on the Levin (but there is a bit
of a price difference).

I have several bigger lathes but the Taig shines for certain work
because:
1) tooling is cheap and modifiable
2) Top speed is 5000 rpm, which is great for small parts
3) soft jaw 3 jaw chuck is great for certain operations
4) If I need to do something destructive (like grinding) on it,
replacement parts are cheap.

The Taig has shortcomings though:
1) No way to do single point threading (aftermarket accessories
partially answer this)
2) Lowest speed is 500 rpm, which is too fast for some work
3) Not a lot of space
4) Not as wide a range of accessories as other lathes.

But I am the #1 crazy Taig guy, if you haven't, check out my Taig
pages:
www.cartertools.com


Nicholas,
Thank for the reply. I'll look at your site. Finding someone with lots
of experience with one of these machines is just what I'm lookin
for.The Levin I have is quite small. A very good machine but limited
in travel. The cross slide is clamped to the bed wherever it needs to
be to do the machining. The cross slide has a compound that can be
turned 90 degrees for turning straight parts. There is no longitudinal
lead screw. So threading on this lathe can't be done either. Since
I'll be using a DC motor with a variable speed control the speeds
won't be a limitation. And the top speed rating of the spindle is way
higher than 5000 rpm according to the Taig web site. Which is one of
the reasons for considering it.
Eric

On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 07:24:03 -0700, Eric R Snow
wrote:

Thanks for the reply DoN. I know a guy with a Unimat. I used it and it
was pretty flexible. As to collets, the collets for my Levin are not
the same as the ones the Taig watchmakers spindle uses. That's too bad
because then I'd already have 80 collets for the machine. I've looked
at the collets on the Taig web site. They don't have a large selection
but seem to stout enough. What in particular did you not like about
their collets? As to tapers, most of the tapers I do on small pins
would be short enough for the compound. I did think about a taper
attachment. Maybe there's a market for some.
Eric