DSG LATHE
Having worked for Dean, Smith& Grace for a good few years , I have to say you`ll not find a better machine ! And if one is lucky, a decent machine can still be found at sensible money. You have to bear in mind that the manual DSGs have not made since the late `70s - early 80s so anything that one is likely to find will be 45 + years old .
During my time we did re-build quite a number of older machines - and some of those will be 20 + years old now . I should say that a rebuilt DSG by DSG was NOT a steam- clean, quick coat of cheap paint and a polish of the handwheels job, but a complete strip down , every part examined , bed-ways and slides reground , the machine reassembled to original alignments and tolerances and finally a proper `fill and rub down` paint job in quality machinery paint. The result was indistinguishable from a new machine - but of course expensive. And less and less companies were prepared to pay for this, unless it was one of the larger / long bed type machines.
Because a DSG was a lot more expensive when new , they tended to be sold into the larger, well established engineering concerns and often had `pride of place` in the shop . I came across many instances where the DSG was a `one operator` machine and no-one else used it in his absence - the machine being treated and looked after as his own personal property,
something you probably won`t find today. These machines do come up for sale from time to time as the original operator retires and then it becomes another old machine.
Bottom line is - a DSG is a quality machine - very user friendly and nice to use and well worth any TLC you give it . One small point - if it is a gap- bed machine you are considering - not all are - make sure the removable gap piece is fitted , or at least with the machine. Gap- pieces get taken out put under the bench and forgotten and the machine later sold on without the gap- piece . Believe me - very, very expensive and time consuming to fit a new one .
Colchesters are OK and are very plentiful in the marketplace, particularly the Triumph model , but because they were cheap (ish ) when new , they were the workhorses in many small shops, and had a full and hard life and then replaced for a new one. So, if a Colchester is your choice, look very carefully, as any worn machine with noisy headstock gearing can be very expensive to put right .
The availability of spare parts is another consideration - parts for Colchesters shouldn`t be a problem as there are so many in the field . DSG used to be able to supply parts for any machine - and some very old machine too . In some instances to be helpful, they would give the customer the drawing and suggest he makes his own. Whether spares are still available as before I don`t know, but the company has changed hands twice in recent years, so things might be different now.
Mitchell lathes were quite nice, `no frills`, practicable machines with a useful capacity and also at one time near neighbours of Dean, Smith& Grace in Keighley. The company became part of the B. Elliott Machine Tool Group and moved from Keighley many years ago. Mitchell lathes were popular machines with their good capacity in works maintenance shops. Nowadays when many companies out source their maintenance requirements and get rid of the in house maintenance shops , these machine turn up not having done a lot of work and are a good buy. Incidentally , the former chief designer of the later Mitchell lathes did some free lance design work on a project I was involved with . He came with a large roll of lathe drawings with the idea of producing a slightly re- vamped Mitchell lathe that Elliotts had discontinued.
There are a lot of continental machines about of varying quality and provenance, and probably only sold here in small numbers. It can be a problem to find any service information or even spare parts for these machines. The possible exception is the range of Czech machine tools sold in the UK under the TOS banner by the 600 Group. TOS machines are well built , rugged machine and perform well and are fairly plentiful. The Czechs are good engineers and their machine tools are no exception. There could be some good buys here.
Italian machine tools look nice and are fairly rare here, but my experience with the manufacturers of the few Italian machine I have used has been an unhappy experience - any requests for service information or spare parts has been met with a total blank / or nothing. It seems they have a policy no assistance once a machine is more than about 5 years old - or less. On that basis, I would give any Italian machine a wide berth.
MARK RIGG
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