Woman Sock

The range starts with the VL100, probably the best mini lathe available. There are two versions - bench mount and cabinet mounted.

The next in the range is the VL175, with the unique swivel head design making it the most rigid lathe of it's type. There are two versions - bench mounted or stand mounted. The stands are now bolted together and the electronics are contained in a metal box that can be hung on the wall or incorporated into your own custom made bench. A remote switch box with 2m cable is now standard equipment.

Moving up to the 200 and 300 series lathes, the 300 being best selling, high quality, large capacity lathe on the market. Designed with both the serious amateur and professional turner in mind they are available in either short or long bed form, however only the short bed 300 has the facility to add bed extensions which the long bed models don't.

Due to streamlining of the Vicmarc range, the VL300 is now only available with a 3hp (2kw) motor and on a adjustable leg cabinet in either the long or short bed models.

The figures 100, 175, 200, 300 relate to the distance between the bed and the centre of the drive spindle in millimetres, although the VL100 has a centre height of 125mm.

For the prices of the lathes please refer to the separate  price list in the main menu.

About variable speed units

A variable speed lathe is only as good as the inverter or drive that powers it.

Vicmarc only use Fuji high performance drives and have recently installed the latest version of these drives/inverters across the range, and are matched to high efficiency European sourced motors i.e: AEG, Lafert or ABB. The new drives have twice the programming power of the previous model, this means that they have superior speed accuracy allowing better control even with rapidly changing loads and feature a unique dynamic torque-vector system which automatically calculates the optimum motor power for the load status - voltage and current vectors are continuously tuned to maintain the maximum output torque. Importantly for the larger lathes the low speed torque output has increased by 25%, from 150% to 200%, this not only applies to start up and running but just as importantly when you want to stop the lathe.

They have been programmed with a 3 second acceleration ramp and a 4 second deceleration ramp, this is the time that the lathe takes to reach maximum revs in any of the speed ratios and to come to a stop, so if you are working at two thirds of maximum revs the stop time will be shorter than the full 4 seconds. If you want to sand with the lathe reversed there is no need to stop the lathe first, just move the switch from forwards to reverse, push the stop button and then the start button and the lathe will ramp down and then back up to the speed set in 7 seconds or less depending on the speed you were running at.