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Table lathe and drill/mill

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Robert Hornby:
I will be moving to a retirement village in the near future and my workshop will have to go. I would still like to have a small bench lathe and drill/mill and have been looking online at the SEIG products and asking if any member has experience of this brand. I would also welcome any suggestions. I propose to set up a bench in the garage so space will be at a premium.

samc88:
Andrew Whale on the Learning Turning Metal youtube channel uses (or did use) Seig lathe and mini mill.
https://www.youtube.com/c/LearningTurningMetalbyAndrewWhale

I have a warco WM12 mini mill which I am impressed with for its compact size

Jasonb:
I have 3 of their mills.

A lot will depend on the length of your bench. Probably too small for the SX3 or X3 size, I use the X3 the most. Next down is the SX2.7 which is of lighter construction but will still remove a reasonable amount of metal, I quite often sit at this one which may be a future consideration if standing becomes a problem.  The X2.... size may well suit limited space better but I have not used that size mill.

As for reliability I got the X3 in 2007, it has needed 1 pair of brushed, a couple of toothed belts and one LED (replacement still to be fitted) which I would class as very good.

Certainly upto making model engines.

If space is very limited then also look at the Sherline products

paul gough:
The sizes of the things you want to machine determines pretty much what can be done, as you would know. My close friend has both optimum and seig lathes and 2.7 seig mill, ( and many larger machines), which I have used on a couple of occasions. I was ambivalent towards the seig and optimum machines and would recommend you make a trip down to Melbourne and look at them at ‘Ausee Machine Tools’  showroom before purchasing. Likewise ‘Hare and Forbes’ for hands on with Optimum stuff. When I moved to Victoria I only took my Sherline lathe and purchased the 5400 mill as I was only interested in small things, you can see a picture of what was my set up just before getting the mill on my workshop “Toolroom post, I had a 1.2 x2 metre space. Crueby demonstrates how “big” you can go on Sherline machines, but he does know them intimately and I think it would be fair to say he takes them to their maximum envelope. If you are only contemplating rather small work I can say I am completely satisfied with Sherlines. They are very expensive relative to Seig machines twice their size. I got both lathe and mill with upgrade C5 bearings and ER 16 headstocks as all chucks are available with the er16 21x1.5 mm thread. My suggestion is, think hard about the size of things you are going to machine, do you want any sort of portability, (Sometimes I take my Sherline out to the back verandah on cold days and work in the warm sun, can’t do that with bigger machines. All boils down to budget and sizes really. Regards, Paul Gough.

Jo:
My experiences of SEIG products is that they should be considered to be a cheap casting set that has been roughly assembled and needs finishing off. Be prepared to throw a few bits away (mainly bearings) and replace them and to get someone to do some machining to sort out the features you find e.g. like my SEIG 3's tailstock is out of line with the headstock  :rant: and I recall Eric had to re-machine the dovetails under the bed on one of their milling machines as it was all over the place  :ShakeHead: The SEIG factory seems to have more Friday afternoon's than monday mornings  ::)

If you want a reasonable retirement table top set up then I too would recommend you have a look at what Crueby does with his Sherlines.

And get yourself a CAD system so you can do some virtual assembly/machining, without the need to house what you have made.

Jo

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