The Home of Graduate

  Wood Turning Lathes

About L.R.E.

1979

 

L.R.E. Machinery & Equipment Co. began life

 

In the beginning dealing with general machine tools & woodworking machinery. From the early eighties and 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,  we looked at ways to improve the already superb Graduate lathe.

 

1989

 

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

 

Other improvments/modifications followed through the 1990's increasing turning capacities (diameter & centre distance) to name a few.

 

2002

 

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 drawings and 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.

2007

 

Times move on and LRE with it, to this end the Variturn 1642 has now been superseded by the latest model the 'Graduate Variturn (1630)'.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 no longer needed, allowing for a simple speed control throughout the speed range purely on the turn of a dial.

 

The 'Graduate Variturn (1630)' has a 12 position indexing / spindle lock incorporated into the headstock. As access to the spindle and motor is no longer needed on a regular basis, the hinged access doors have been removed and replaced by screwed on covers removable for maintenance purposes only.

 

2011

 

Manufacture and marketing of the 'Graduate Variturn (1630)' has now been taken over by Wadkin Daltons in Nottingham, where it will be re-branded 'Wadkin Graduate' for further information contact Wadkin Daltons.