It's my pleasure to help out.

Like you I have a nice little tool room lathe, a Jet 13x40 GH, about 1800 lbs or so. Tucks neatly into a corner and uses up minimal floor space. But it takes me forever to make some of my parts on it. It's the tool changes and different setups that are the killer. One particular part that took me about 40 minutes to make on the manual lathe, takes about 4 minutes on the CNC. Spindle HP and rigidity are also a factor.

Yup, I think that CNC lathe around the corner is looking pretty good. All of the hard work is done. And for $4000 you are buying a lot of really expensive hardware if you had to go buy it. The question is do you really want to spend the next year or so building a lathe or would you rather be making parts?

My 30 year old Hardinge Conquest 42 has a smaller work envelope than the Jet, but has a 10 tool turret, w/5 live tool positions. 10 HP spindle motor, weighs in at 10,200 lbs, and has about a 60x90 foot print. I got a pretty good deal on it, basically I bought the 5 live tool holders, the normal tool holders, and a Kitagawa 6 inch chuck and they threw the rest of the lathe in with it, $9000 for all. It ran and made parts when I got it, but I didn't like the way the antique Fanuc controls worked so I ripped out everything that said Fanuc on it and replaced it with my own system. That was a about a month project and I do this stuff for a living.

Like you, my floor space is limited as is my power, but I was able to shoehorn the lathe in there and get it powered up off of a rotary phase converter.

I'll be interested in what direction you decide to go.