New to me Atlas 618 Lathe

[Goldxxx]

I was really missing my Myford ML7. I sold when I bought my South Bend 13 inch lathe. I thought I would never need a small lathe again. I was wrong. Keeping a small first or second lathe after upgrading to a larger lathe is a good idea.
After looking for a while I was able to find an Atlas 618 in pretty decent shape. It’s much smaller than my old Myford but it will fit nicely with my Atlas horizontal mill and South Bend 7 inch shaper. The headstock gears are good. No missing teeth. It’s the newer roller bearing spindle. No broken or cracked castings.
Doesn’t look abused. It came with a 4 jaw, change gears, two faceplates, lantern tool post( missing rocker), toolpost tool holder. A ton of NOS HSS ground and unground tool bits. And two Atlas face plates that are threaded 1/2-20( strange because they don’t match spindle threads) and a couple of lathe dogs. I feel that I got a good deal on everything. The hunt will be on to find some of the missing Atlas tooling.
Does anyone else feel that this is a decent smaller lathe? I’ve owned Sherline and Taig mini lathes so I’m used to the limitations of smaller machines. Are parts easy to come by? Any nice projects completed on one?

 

[Darren]

I have a Standard Modern 16x60, and while its very nice , and the capacity is good, everything is heavier to operate. It'll wear you out making multiple small parts. I had an Emco V10P 10x25". I recently sold it after I bought my Emco V13 13x40 lathe. Its a great balance having both., but the 13x40 does 90% of what I do.

 

[DPittman]

I was really missing my Myford ML7. I sold when I bought my South Bend 13 inch lathe. I thought I would never need a small lathe again. I was wrong. Keeping a small first or second lathe after upgrading to a larger lathe is a good idea.
After looking for a while I was able to find an Atlas 618 in pretty decent shape. It’s much smaller than my old Myford but it will fit nicely with my Atlas horizontal mill and South Bend 7 inch shaper. The headstock gears are good. No missing teeth. It’s the newer roller bearing spindle. No broken or cracked castings.
Doesn’t look abused. It came with a 4 jaw, change gears, two faceplates, lantern tool post( missing rocker), toolpost tool holder. A ton of NOS HSS ground and unground tool bits. And two Atlas face plates that are threaded 1/2-20( strange because they don’t match spindle threads) and a couple of lathe dogs. I feel that I got a good deal on everything. The hunt will be on to find some of the missing Atlas tooling.
Does anyone else feel that this is a decent smaller lathe? I’ve owned Sherline and Taig mini lathes so I’m used to the limitations of smaller machines. Are parts easy to come by? Any nice projects completed on one?

I had an Atlas 618 also. I liked the lathe for its nice little footprint and decent quality, and it was alright and nice for light work. I think of I were in the market again for such a lathe I'd likely buy an Asian mini lathe of some sort given the high price of the old Atlas platform.

Parts are still pretty available in the used market but in my opinion are also overpriced.

I did buy some new parts for my lathe about 10 years ago directly from Clausing in the states.

 

[trlvn]

@Goldxxx I too had an Atlas 618. I bought it as a wreck for almost nothing and learned a lot going through it to get it up and running. Alas, it turned out the main spindle was bent and so I sold it for parts earlier this year. I still have some things--might have the face plate. Let me know if you want me to look.

Craig