Thread: thinking of buying a centre lathe

Hi im new to this forum but have looked at it for a week or so I am thinking of buying a lathe from Hare and Forbes a AL340D a small centre lathe i know should have bought it a few weeks ago when the had a sale but did not hear about it till it was over. But apart from looking on the machinery house web sight as it does not give any indication of what work you mught expect out of such a lathe and its limitation apart from travels etc. I would like to know poeples opinions on how usefull and the quality of them it comes with a 2hp 240v motor it seems to cover most threads pitches with the exception of the 1/2 pitches in the imperail range which would cover all i wish to do.
So with a 2hp motor what sort of cut could i expect to be able to do say on about 2" dia mild steel with carbide tooling i dont want to rip off lots dont believe in working machines above their limit as i do want the lathe to last many thanks i look forward to you opinion and comments Thanks

They are a fair size lathe and can comfortably take 2mm (4mm diameter) off. The travels are all about the same in this range of lathes and will be adequate to do most all jobs. The one thing that comes to mind is cutting Morse Tapers (MT) as most people usually make their own tail stock tooling, which for that lathe is a MT3 and 70mm is just enough to make up an MT3 arbour.

Dave