WARCO bench top pillar drills...any good?

[lastminute]

....thinking about one of these...too far to travel to showroom, any advice most welcome!

Regards

Gerry

 

[yanky]

Same question myself.
I had an axminster hobby floor standing one, but it used belts to change speeds, and accuracy could have been better. I am currently looking for something much smaller, possibly the Bosch bench drill, which is small, but looks like it will do a better job. Have you considered the Ryobi bench drill EDP model?

 

[yanky]

Sorry, the Ryobi is no longer available in the uk as far as I can see.

 

[shed9]

I used Warco a while ago to purchase a large metal lathe - the service was grim. This was about three years and things may have changed but it's probably one of the most shocking experiences I've had of non-existent customer service. Just my £0.02 worth.

 

[Hemsby]

Although I have had no reason to contact WARCO since my delivery of their Belt/Disc sander.

The communications and help both before and after were great including their resolve of a re-delivery issue at no cost to me, despite the problem being down to my circumstances.

 

[shed9]

Although I have had no reason to contact WARCO since my delivery of their Belt/Disc sander.

The communications and help both before and after were great including their resolve of a re-delivery issue at no cost to me, despite the problem being down to my circumstances.

I don't doubt they have countless happy customers and that they get it right most of the time, just adding a little advice from real world experience from myself. I'd like to think things are better now anyhow.

To add some meat to my gripe, I bought a lathe which turned out to have significantly less specs than advertised on the website requiring collection and repurchase of a machine that met my stated requirements at extra cost (and time). Delivery was painful, unhelpful, dangerous and rude - aside from them originally attempting to move it by its head. To add to this, the second machine was also woefully ill described and was missing key functions that were stated on the site.

I was actually quite calm about it at the time as I know this happens from time to time but thought they would sort it out or I'd just send it back. They ignored my very polite emails (both of them) and was offered a cheque for £100 if I promised not to contact them again.

It was all very baffling at the time and I still can't work out what went on.

 

[jdeacon]

In my experience, it's luck of the draw with Warco. I had a vertical milling machine from them; it was excellent and is still going strong.

I went to one of their open days. They were very nice, very helpful and seemed very knowledgeable.

Then I got a WM240 lathe from them. It was poor. The wrong travelling steady was supplied, and after several "we'll look into it" phone calls that went nowhere, I gave up on the steady.

Then again, on another occasion, I rang them about some tooling and whoever I spoke to was very helpful. Perhaps even one model like the 240 lathe is sourced from more than one Chinese factory, hence the luck of the draw.