Abraham,
I'd be a fool to disagree with either Norman's or Johns points. Both of em are far smarter and have much more experience than I do. So it's impossible to argue their facts and points of view. But in some ways I can and do understand what your saying also. I've seen some machine tool parts and workmanship examples so bad it makes one wonder how it could be ever done by accident. The tooling was obviously so mis aligned some of it could be easily seen visually. The very minimums spent on a few simple gages would have caught those defects long before the machines or tooling got that far out of what I'd hope was originally true alignment. I once bought a Seig C-6 sized lathe that still makes my blood pressure go to dangerous levels when I think of just how poorly and inaccurate it was built.
I'd like to think I know a little bit about machine tools, how their built, used, and aligned. Exactly how some of the machined or ground in misalignments get done on some of this equipment is something I can't quite yet figure out. Yes we are buying at that cheapest price we can find, but other than the set up, random checking, and or machine tool re alignment time, it costs no more to machine and / or grind parts a lot closer than they usualy are to correct, as it does to incorrectly do it. That was my main point behind mentioning we need to educate hobbiests far better than these forums have done. In one way or another, I can usually figure out just how to accuratley test pretty well any machine tool and it's movements that I currently own. Knowing how to do so with at least some hope of compensating for t's wear or even built in factory defects isn't from what I've seen all that understood by maybe even the 50% mark on forums just like this one. That to me is a major failure by all these forums and members including myself. It's pretty hard to refuse to buy shoddy workmanship if you don't know enough to test and find out that's it's shoddy.
Unlike John, I've never been to China, they apparenly have a far different culture and outlook in regards to business practices than we do. For some of them, actualy caring about what your building, selling, or producing isn't a nessisary or even a needed requirement. But my understanding of the Chinese business methods faulty or not is a bit too long winded to deal with here. Anyone who seriously thinks all China can build is crap is totally incorrect. John I know has spent some time there and the majority of it machine tool related that I know of. China can just like any other industrialised nation build just about anything you want, and up to todays current state of the art in regards to quality, accuracy, and dependability. Engineering designs, specifications and standards are just that. They can't be somehow different just because the country of origin is different. We all know that the above costs, and quality and especialy accuracy is always going to be expensive no matter who makes it. You probably could build dirt cheap crap at very close to the same price in almost any other country you'd care to name. A business friendly country with very few enviromental, health and safety, pension plans, taxes, etc,etc,etc. are why companies move there.
My apologys for somewhat dragging your thread into off topic areas.
So were again back to your original problem. Today at the smaller machine tool equipment level, price dictates what's avalible. I have no hands on experience with the higher priced equipment or anything else other than an Atlas horizontal mill, a South Bend shaper, A 3/4 sized Taiwan built Bridgeport copy built by Bemato, An Emco, Seig, and a Weiss lathe with the same milling head as yours. But there's not a whole lot on the market anymore that's still affordable while still being at least semi decent. Emco, or at least the high priced Austrian built Emco's start out around the 13" swing lathes and are certainly high priced, Myfords way overpriced for what your buying model is gone, there's a small high priced Italian built lathe I can't recall the name of, (Cerranti ?) and maybe a few others I forgot or didn't list. So to get what you want at the accuracy level your saying you'd like, you could spend the large money and buy exactly what you need brand new, spend fairly large money and maybe a lot of time waiting for a really low use but very good shape and high quality machine to show up for sale that's somewhat local, Buy the same that's wore out and FULLY rebuild it back to at least the originall factory specifications. But we both know that will take a fair amount of cash, time and effort. You could buy the same as what you already have and rebuild it to your own personal specifications. Again cash, time and effort. One way or another, to get better than what you already have, it's going to cost more time, more money and more effort. I don't like the facts any better than you do. Sadly they are the facts today though.
And despite what some think, those higher accuracy machine tools will require higher accuracy tooling and measureing equipment.
Pete
