It's been 30 years since I last used a lathe or milling machine.
I now need something that can do small scale machining (2 to 40 mm) of
fibreglass/epoxy and the occasional bit of stainless steel.
Slow cutting is OK as it's just a hobby thing. 0.1mm precision is probably good
enough.
I looked at some of the videos on youtube and some people made negative comments
about plastic gears and so on.
What other things should I watch for?

Mike

In article ,
Mike B someone@noplace wrote:

I looked at some of the videos on youtube and some people made negative
comments
about plastic gears and so on.

Plastic gears are not "always innately" bad. On some machines they serve
as the mechanical fuse, so if somebody decides to tackle twice as much
as the machine can handle, the plastic gear fails. The operator making a
video to show the world rarely admits that he was abusing the machine
when the gear broke, of course.

If replaced with another (cheap, buy a few spares, it's a fuse) plastic
gear, the rest of the machine keeps working.

If "upgraded" to metal, a more expensive or inconvenient part of the
machine may fail "next time." There may also be excessive wear on metal
parts that were expecting to run against plastic.

Not to say there can't be or are not crappy machines which happen to
have plastic gears, but be careful of thinking "plastic == bad" in a
knee-jerk manner.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

On 11/09/2012 07:51 AM, Ecnerwal wrote:
In article ,
Mike B someone@noplace wrote:

I looked at some of the videos on youtube and some people made negative
comments
about plastic gears and so on.

Plastic gears are not "always innately" bad. On some machines they serve
as the mechanical fuse, so if somebody decides to tackle twice as much
as the machine can handle, the plastic gear fails. The operator making a
video to show the world rarely admits that he was abusing the machine
when the gear broke, of course.

I find that people who use youtube videos as a substitute for writing
out information are generally not the kind of people I would desire to
receive any type of information from.

Jon

On Fri, 09 Nov 2012 22:15:58 +0800, Mike B someone@noplace wrote:

It's been 30 years since I last used a lathe or milling machine.
I now need something that can do small scale machining (2 to 40 mm) of
fibreglass/epoxy and the occasional bit of stainless steel.
Slow cutting is OK as it's just a hobby thing. 0.1mm precision is probably good
enough.
I looked at some of the videos on youtube and some people made negative comments
about plastic gears and so on.
What other things should I watch for?

Mike

Question #1
How much can you afford to spend?

Question #2
How much room do you have?

Question #3
How often will you be needing to machine?

Answer those..and we can begin to assist you.

Gunner


--
""The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have
to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That’s why I
became an operative working with Democrats. With Democrats all you
have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to
use the ole cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd.

Eighty percent of the people who call themselves Democrats don’t have
a clue as to political reality.
What amazes me is that you could take a group of people who are hard
workers and convince them that they should support social programs
that were the exact opposite of their own personal convictions. Put a
little fear here and there and you can get people to vote any way you
want.

The voter is basically dumb and lazy. The reason I became a Democratic
operative instead of a Republican was because there were more
Democrats that didn’t have a clue than there were Republicans."
James Carvell, DNC operative

On Friday, November 9, 2012 8:18:11 AM UTC-6, Mike B wrote:
It's been 30 years since I last used a lathe or milling machine.

I now need something that can do small scale machining (2 to 40 mm) of

fibreglass/epoxy and the occasional bit of stainless steel.

Slow cutting is OK as it's just a hobby thing. 0.1mm precision is probably good

enough.

I looked at some of the videos on youtube and some people made negative comments

about plastic gears and so on.

What other things should I watch for?

If you are buying new for a machine to work in that range, you just need to order a minilathe from Micromark, or possibly Grizzly.
It will do what you need, with some minor tweaking.

Fiberglass is nasty stuff. It can bind gears or grind stuff to pieces.

Kinda like grinding. Protect yourself and the lathe / mill from grit.
Glass grit.

Maybe a small watch lathe would do what you want.

Martin

On 11/9/2012 8:15 AM, Mike B wrote:
It's been 30 years since I last used a lathe or milling machine.
I now need something that can do small scale machining (2 to 40 mm) of
fibreglass/epoxy and the occasional bit of stainless steel.
Slow cutting is OK as it's just a hobby thing. 0.1mm precision is probably good
enough.
I looked at some of the videos on youtube and some people made negative comments
about plastic gears and so on.
What other things should I watch for?

Mike