Graduate Lathes Centre About Us

L.R.E. Machinery & Equipment Co. began life in 1979, founded by Lee, Roy & Edith Cooper (LRE).

In the beginning dealing with general machine tools & woodworking machinery. From the early eighties with the explosion of interest in wood turning, our activities started to lean more and more towards the wood turning lathes.

As our interest was in high quality machines, the obvious contender for our affections lay with the Union Graduate.

Drawing from a few decades combined experience of design and manufacture in the machine tool industry, both myself (Lee) and my father (Roy) looked at ways to improve the already superb Graduate lathe.

In discussion with many amateur and professionals wood turners the idea of variable speed was born in the late eighties, with the prototype 'Variturn' launched in 1989, probably the first commercially available A.C. Inverter driven wood turning lathe on the market.

Other improvments/modifications followed, increasing turning capacities (diameter & centre distance) to name a few.

Sadly Roy passed away in January 1994, by which time 75% of sales were Graduate lathes, from then on the percentage of Graduate sales increased, so now in 2007 99% of LRE is Graduate related.

2003 saw the first in-house redesign of the Graduate, designed and built with the amateur / hobby wood turner in mind, the Graduate being too small and under powered for this market, all new patterns were made from scratch, the 'Variturn 1642' incorporating all of the modifications to the rebuilt Graduate lathes in addition to many that were not possible using existing castings.

Times move on and LRE with it, to this end the Variturn 1642 is now being superseded by the latest model the 'Variturn 1630'.

As inverter technology and performance advances the need for changing speeds with a combination of vee belt range changes and variable speed is now ended allowing for a simple speed control throughout the speed range purely on the turn of a dial.

The 'Variturn 1630' will also have a 12 position indexing / spindle lock incorporated into the headstock access to the spindle and motor no longer needed, therefore hinged access doors have been removed being replaced by screwed on covers for maintenance purposes only.

We expect the 'Variturn 1630' to be available Spring/Easter 2008. look out for updates on progress.

Bramco House

Turton St

Golborne

Warrington

Cheshire

WA3 3AB

t: 44 (0) 1942 272323

f: 44 (0) 5601 127376

e: sales@woodturninglathes.co.uk

w: www.woodturninglathes.co.uk