Thread: Cinese Lathes

Hey mate my advice would be to keep an eye on Facebook you will find a cheap lathe that will suit your needs eventually. I picked this one up the other day for $300. Has a 4” swing and they tend to come up fairly often, does everything I need it too for home.

Buy once, cry once. With secondhand machines the value is there, you can resell when the time comes. Homemade will be a pile of junk when you don't need it anymore.

Originally Posted by doily_grunge

Hey mate my advice would be to keep an eye on Facebook you will find a cheap lathe that will suit your needs eventually. I picked this one up the other day for $300. Has a 4” swing and they tend to come up fairly often, does everything I need it too for home.

That’s a lot of lathe for the price, and it looks pretty tidy to boot. Good score

How does that feed?

With the mention of a hobbymat earlier on - and looking up it's capabilities, which is probably at the watchmaker/jeweller end of the lathe spectrum, this comes to mind -

You would engage the half nut lever to the left of the carriage.

I bought my AL320g recently for $1250, and sold my old little advance lathe for $500, so there are good ones out there, just set up your searches on all the popular sites, something will come up. People are selling stuff now just to pay the bills.

^^Might be a bit late now, looks like he's given it away going by the other thread.

Originally Posted by pipeclay

You would engage the half nut lever to the left of the carriage.

Can't say I've ever used a feed based off a leadscrew, beyond half-nut and screw wear, be interested to see how fine a finish you could achieve....although I guess there's some combination of gears that might compensate.