Some photos of My Hobbymat MD65 Lathe
The Hobbymat was made in Eastern Germany until fairly recently and was designed for light duty hobby work. My own was manfactured in 1990, there are some images below which are linked to larger images, but be aware these are ~1Mb each.
My Hobbymat - Click to zoom in
The Specifications are:
Height of centres | 65mm |
Distance between centres | 300mm |
Turning diameter over carriage |
62mm |
Cross slide traverse | 80mm |
Saddle traverse | 55mm |
Headstock taper | No 2 Morse |
Headstock bore | 12mm |
Speeds | 250, 500, 1000, 2000 rpm |
Tailstock taper | No 1 Morse |
Drilling depth | 35mm |
Depth | 340mm |
Length | 810mm |
Weight | 45kg |
Motor | 250W |
The headstock & Motor |
Cross & Top slides |
Cross slides from above |
The Headstock & Leadscrew Clutch |
A BFE65 Milling Attachment |
Lathe and Mill in Action |
This lathe is related to the larger Prazimat lathe but has the considerable advantage of being small enough to be moved around by one person. There are some disadvantages to this, although solidly made from 45kg of steel, clearly this lathe is not in the same league as say an ML7, which is twice the size and weight, but it compares very favorably with many modern small lathes.
The BFE65 milling attachment fits to the bed of the lathe to produce a versatile mill/drill using the cross slide as an XY table. A special milling table that replaces the topslide is provided and can be seen in one of the photographs above. It is alos possibile to buy an XY table for the BFE65 to make a stand alone milling machine.
The Hobbymat MD65 is a precision screwcutting lathe and is supplied with gears for both metric and imperial threads. The electrics are built in and the motor can be reversed. As the chuck is bolted to the spindle, there is no danger of the chuck unwinding itself in reverse as can happen with lathes from Myford and Boxford. The spindle is bored straight through, with a No2 Morse Taper and can pass work of up to 12mm diameter.
All images (c) Mike Willis 2005