I though i would start a new thread on this rather than derail the auctions thread. At work we have Colchester Magnum, before we got a equivalent sized CNC lathe, i ran it a lot, and it has some serious design flaws that i hate.

1. The engagement of the half nuts. The leaver for the half nuts lifts to engage but it doesn't positively lock. So you have to hold it or the nuts will slowly disengage while you are threading. Problem here is you need one hand to withdraw the tool, and another to push the button to stop the spindle. Maybe people in Colchester have 3 hands? or maybe they are a heavily unionized shop and 2 people run every lathe?. Our solution is to cable tie the leaver up.

2. Spindle drive. The designers at Colchester used a hydraulic clutch and a electro-mechanical brake for the drive. My honest opinion is the clutch would be excellent in a bunout car. It is either on or off, there is no slip during engagement. The result of this is we couldn't run things like conveyor drums faster that 300 rpm or they would slip badly in the chuck during acceleration. Also speeds over 600rpm (top gear is 1200rpm) the belts would slip badly at start even with new belts tensioned to the factory specs. The brake was also a extremely savage and caused high inertia parts to slip in the chuck. There was a override button you could hold in to stop the brake coming on but it was on the head stock and the spindle stop button was on the carriage, hard to reach if you are doing a long part. We replaced the button with switch and that fixed the brake problem. We have now fitted a VFD and rewired the lathe this has fixed the clutch problem.

3. chuck guard. poor design and gets in the way when working close to the chuck.

4. difficult to change feed gears.

5. No graduations on longitudinal feed.

6. crossslide dial not reliable or finely graduated enough.

In fairness it does have some good points, its really rigid, feed joystick mounted at rear of carriage away from flying swarf, and a big spindle bore. But overall worst lathe i have ever used.