South Bend to manufacture small lathes and machine tools.

[90LX_Notch]

Check this out.

South Bend is apparently going to manufacture small lathes again. They are going to also have milling machines, drill presses, band saws and surface grinders. I wonder if the castings are going to be Chinese. Anybody have any other info on any of this?

http://www.southbendlathe.com/home_zoom_text.htm
http://www.southbendlathe.com/lathes.aspx

 

[applescotty]

There's some info in this over on the Practical Machinist forum:
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/showthread.php?t=177783

Scott

 

[Lew Hartswick]

South Bend IS now a Chinese co. They bought the name.
...lew...

 

[David Morrow]

South Bend IS now a Chinese co. They bought the name.
...lew...

According to information via the above link, it was bought by Grizzly from Bellingham, Washington. I think that's in the U.S.

Let's hope that there is a rebirth of quality, domestic made machinery at decent prices.

 

[rake60]

South Bend is saying their new bench lathes will be made from redesigned
original castings.
???

Time will tell where and to what level of quality they are built.
I hope they are reasonably priced. If they turn out to be the same
lathe that's my shop at double the price for gray paint it won't
be a good thing for SB.

Rick

 

[Tin Falcon]

The current South Bend site is brand new as of 1 April 09.
The headquarters is in Bellingham Washington same as grizzly HQ
the distributor is now Woodstock international.AKA shop Fox
the parts department is "Contacted" to Grizzly in Springfield MS parts were being handled by LeBond.
The Site claims traditional South bend Quality and components/materials
I appears to me this is a Grizzly enterprise headquartered in the US I Hope at least the assembly and some of the manufacture is in the US. Like Rick says will have to wait and see.
Tin

 

[Mainer]

That PM link has a lot of information, including several posts by the owner of Grizzly explaining his plans.

It sure sounds good. I hope it works.

 

[Captain Jerry]

It looks like South Bend is in Tiawan.

http://images.southbendlathe.com/productphotos/lathes/14x40-Toolroom-Lathe/sb1012.gif

 

[Twmaster]

As the posts from Papagrizzly on PM said the machines will be made in Taiwan with Japanese bearings.

One thing that keeps getting missed... Griz does not own SB. The man that owns Grizz (Shiraz Baliola) now owns SB. I'm sure there will be some integration of SB products into the Griz business. It would be foolish for them not to integrate somewhat.

I am very disappointed in that originally the SB site said they would have a 9x22 lathe. It seems that is no longer going to happen.

I'm moving to Oklahoma in a few weeks. Once I got settled I wanted to buy a new good quality 9-10" swing lathe. I was hoping the new SB would be the one..

EDIT: I ust wanted to add... Those Taiwanese lathes shown on the SB web site are the units they've had in production for quite some time. They are not new models. Even though LeBlond bought and basically killed SB they were still selling rebadged Asian machines.

It's been a scant 8 months since Mr. B bought SB. I'm sure it will take a little while before we see some new or 'new old' products from the 'new' SB company.

 

[1hand]

Funny thing. I got my 2010 grizzly catalog today. Yep there are South Bend lathes,mills, and saws in there. Looks like a 14"x40" is the smallest lathe for now. For $18,000.

WOW.............Matt

 

[rake60]

I also received the Grizzly 2010 catalog today.
I can't say I regret my name not being in it this year.
That was a little awkward. LOL

The South Bend offerings run from pages 570 to 586.
They certainly don't look like the machine tools I've come to
expect from South Bend. Times do change.

Rick

 

[Tin Falcon]

the site show a 7 x 15 slated for the future guess time will tell.
need to browse the catalog.
tIn