I am tired, I don't want to deal with hunting shit anymore. I just want to input money and receive stuff without it being a knife fight over some old junk worn out machine that'd been out of production for 70 years and I have to get raped to get replacement part on ebay by some other boomer.Are chink mini lathes viable to get running well without needing another lathe or a mill to fix the brand new machine you just bought? I just want to make small steel items, maybe up to an inch in diameter but realistically 5/16 or smaller diameter machine screws.
>>2790669Harbor freight has a small metal lathe. Idk how it is, but i have their small wood one and it does a good job. The metal one is around $800. I would say buy a mid grade one. The cheap ones are going to require tinkering to work and the expensive ones are expensive. It's cheaper to buy a decent one than to buy a cheap one and then a decent one a month later.
>>2790669I hear they're pretty good as long as you bolt them down and have reasonable expectations about the kinds of speeds, feeds, and materials it can handle.
>>2790818>have reasonable expectations about the kinds of speeds, feeds, and materials it can handle.this. don't buy it unless you know pretty much what it can do. lol. this board kills me. not one fucking mention of materials or diameters, just those old reliable "reasonable expectations". I usually respond to these toy lathe threads with my actual experience with the HF version, but I'd just rather bitch today.
>>2790824there is literally dimensions and materials in the op
>>2790692A small lathe is only suitable for small pieces or for softer metal. You will certainly not be able to make parts of harder alloys to the right spec.
>>2790831Ok. OP specifically said he wanted to make small steel parts so what the problem?
>>2790669chink minilathes are crap. once you buy the piece of shit, then do a ton of work to make it only half a piece of shit, you might as well have just shelled out the money on something decent.jet's way overpriced, but grizzly or precision matthews would probably be the way to go. pm has a 12x36 on a stand for like 5k right now. grizzly has a 12x35 gunsmith lathe for less than that.but it all depends on what you want to do/make with it. if you think you're going to retire by straightening drive shafts on a 7x16 mini lathe, you're on drugs. if you just want to make projects and start a youtube channel to compete with quinn dunki and clough42, you'd be in business. still, both pm and grizzly have better minilathes at only a slightly higher price point.
>>2790669>I am tired, I don't want to deal with hunting shit anymore.My (rich, old, experienced) machine shop ownerbro makes a mint off his older version of this:https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/76316397He has many other machines but his specialty is repair machining and so many parts fall in its range it's faster for one-offs to use his Enco while his CNC and larger manual machines are making other parts.You can resell them for a nice chunk of purchase price when you age out of being able to do stuff so actual cost/year won/t be shit. The nice thing about being old is you can estimate your future and enjoy some of your income you might otherwise not.
keep in mind that while a small/flimsy machine can be shit for making chips, it may still be usable for grinding/lapping precise parts in very hard materials
>>2790692They require a lot of mods It’s basically a cordless drill and a carriage bone stock
>>2790907>>2790921This is decent advice - save a bit more for something with a quick change gearbox and power cross slide and you'll be okay. Don't cheap out on a model without them - it's worth the extra cost.
>>2792006>quick change gearbox and power cross slideHaving gone directly from a 7x14 to a 2-ton 17" LeBlond Regal, can confirm this. Swapping gears is ass, not even for threads as much as feed rate.Power cross feed is nice, but nowhere near the upgrade that a gearbox is. Facing and parting are usually a fairly small part of the operation, so don't get too fixated on it.
>>2792009>power cross feedthe real use is cutting nice 45 deg chamfers on part. throw both feeds in at the same time. take a little practice to figure out the slack and where to start cuts, but really handy once it becomes second nature
>>2792015>the real use is cutting nice 45 deg chamfers on partSounds sketchy as fuck, assuming you can even do it. The power feeds on my SAG 12 share a common lever, so that isn't even possible on some lathes.
>>2792021>sketchy not even in the top 10 sketchy things to do around a 200+ lb chunk of spinning metal. my axelson specifically called it out as a feature. monarchs are the same. leblonds stupid single shifter carriage clutch makes their lathes unusable to me
>spend $6000 plus getting 3 phase power so a hobbyist can make screws and bushingsGreat advice.
>>2792026Maybe it makes more sense with HSS/carbon tool speeds, but I can't help but imagine myself waiting just a split second too long and accidentally starting a way deeper cut than intended. Plus, most of the time I want a 45° chamfer, it's just cosmetic or to break an edge and a dedicated chamfer tool takes care of that. Actual features are taken care of with the compound easily enough.IDK, just seems kind of gimmicky to me, especially when the real deluxe option is a power compound feed.
>>2792041>expensive 3ph service no reason unless you're running a business, and even debatable thenyou literally only need a rando old 3ph motor larger than the one you want to run and a piece of rope to pull start it. yes, you can get much more refined, but it's not necessary. i've run brideports and most other things for years on the shitty little jump start capacitor in a box, static "phase converters" that everybody loves to hate. you can build them for under $25 per machine and the motor will rattle along on 1ph just fine, albeit at half power. which is fine for most manual machines
>>2792015lol, why would you do this? Just use an insert at 45 degrees.
>>2792044>just cosmetic or to break an edgethat's exactly where it shines. why tool change to some wide, flat chatter-o-matic when the the turning tool is already there>hss glacial speednot often on my machines. cnmg or positive rake ccmt/ccgt chomp away on most things much better than a hand ground toolbit
>>2792048>and the motor will rattle along on 1ph just fine, albeit at half power. which is fine for most manual machines>running a 3 phase motor on a single phaseDoesn't that fuck something up, electrically speaking? I would think the contacts for the 2nd and 3rd phase would add resistance at least, and probably act as a inductor in the circuit at worst.
https://littlemachineshop.com/Basically upgraded Chinese machines. They work well for what they are.
>>2790831You don’t lathe hardened metals.Might want to anneal it first, then machine, then re-harden.> hey bill, it’s taking forever to turn down this tungsten carbide part with the HSS cutter
>>2792553>using lathe as a verb
>>2790831Why not? With sharp tools and light cuts you can turn anything on any lathe.>t. has turned hardened steel with carbide tools on a 7x14 mini lathe
>>2792584This is just not true. You can't drill a 1/2"; through thick steel plate with a Dremel. You just don't have enough torque to break a chip.
>>2792553You certainly can but it requires high speed and carbide or other suitable tooling. Practical Machinist etc have all the details.
Okay, what about using a drill press as a lathe to get things turned roughly to size? I was thinking, have the table locked, have a cross slide drill press vise bolted to the table with a lathe cutter in it, and have the material spinning in the chuck. for actually moving along the part, I could move the quill up and down to act as the cross slide. Could get fancy and use one of the 10 dremels I pulled out the trash to use a a shitty surface grinder, clamp it in the vise and run a stone in it to clean up the part.I just want to turn down an annealed drill bit to the diameter to use a die to make a custom screw about 1.5" long.
>>2793953That sort of thing has been done, and the Dremel would be more of a toolpost grinder.
>>2792782You can if you do a spiral tool path with a 5 mm endmill.
>>2794398>dremel >.196" endmill >toolpath
>>2793962Would it be better to bolt a rocker tool post to the table, or just use a drill press vise? The stuff is pretty tough even after annealing, I tried to see how long it would take to take it down with a dremel or file and it definitely needs a proper cutter. Probably should just use a grade 5 bolt with a minor diameter close to the rod diameter for the die, and just shave the threads off with the cutter, thread it and make the flat head out of the hex.
>>2790669Just lathe the parts you need with your lathe anon :^)
>>2790669Which ER collet chuck do I need to clamp onto a flesh light Also what do you guys bolt your lathe to when you’re lathing your lathe with your dick Also my tool curves up and to the left will runout be an issue?
>>2792041VFD are cheap and give variable speed. RPC are less cheap if bought (but turn up used so mine was a near-new 15HP rated for six hundred bucks, all it did previously was run a chiller for a few months).For machine tools of enthusiast size VFD is superior for speed control so my round ram and lathe got one each (though you can plug swap if poor or one fails) while my air compressors got the RPC which will also feed my (large) buffers and belt sander when I get around to mounting them.The little single capacitor things are weak sauce but easy to build, see Youtube. Three phase is desirable for machine tools not least because it runs smoother affecting cut quality. See the Practical Machinist forums for all ye need know.
