Is A $600 Mini Lathe Worth It - 2 Year Review

hello everyone and welcome back to the workshop as of filming this video i'll be coming up to the two year mark of getting this mini lathe and for the past year i've used it about four or five days a week and i've seen this lathe at its best and its worst so better lathe than ever it's time to finally review it so these import mini lathes have been around for a very long time and depending on who you ask they can really cops and flack for their size their power and their quality but in the two years that i've owned it i've really come to like this machine in spite of a lot of its pitfalls it must be said for six hundred dollars these are amazing machines because it allows so many people without a huge workshop to have access to a leg which in my opinion is one of the most versatile machines one can have access to in a workshop not only can it turn parts it can also bore holes cut threads and if set up properly it can be used as a milling machine and it must be said lathes are so much fun to work on now of course there are other small lathes out there such as the us-made sherline but the import lathes offer so much more as standard such as the wider work area and the ability to cut threads right out of the box although it must be said the sherline is certainly in a different class of its own and it's a much more accurate and precise machine and it does cost slightly more than these little import lathes now it must be said these lathes do get some flack due to their lack in overall mass compared to a conventional lathe and whilst the whole lathe only comes in at about 40 kilograms which is less than 10 of the weight of the lathe i was trained on and by no means was that a large lathe for most hobbyists this realistically is the biggest thing that we'll be able to mount in our workshops and for most plastics and soft metals these lathes are certainly more than adequate and rigid these layers also get criticism because they lack the horsepower of a big lathe but again for most materials you'll be fine to turn on this lathe the only trouble material that most of us will run into will be some form of mild steel and these lathes are certainly capable of taking light cuts in mild steel and to anyone who says these machines struggle to produce good and accurate parts well i think some of the projects on this channel should prove that otherwise i always have a tolerance usually of plus or minus five hundredths of a millimeter and that's a tolerance that this lathe is perfectly capable of holding parts to so in short these lathes can be really great if you have ever used a larger lathe you'll certainly need to lower your expectations but these can be really great and for six hundred dollars you really can't ask too much so with the brief overview over let's take a more in-depth look at the lathe so what we have here is the 7 by 14 mini lathe there are many different types of mini lags online made by different manufacturers some that are bigger some of them that are more powerful but this one here is the most common and usually the most affordable and this one will also have several different variations this one here is the siege c3 denoted by the red paint and the seed sticker however there are other similar lathes sold under the generic metal worker harbor freight grizzly and they are all based on this length siege generally will be making the castings for the lathe and the other layers will just be painted different colors they will have slightly different carriages motors different quality control slightly different pricing but the quality of parts that they produce will be very similar in australia the range of mini lathes is quite limited to seeg and the generic metal worker so i think the siege one is the slightly higher quality one which is why i ended up with this one the mini lathe once it's taken out of its shipping box is about 73 centimeters long and it will fit on most workbenches and it can't be stressed enough mounting the lathe to the bench using the threaded holes not only will make it produce better parts but it is quite dangerous to have a 40 kilogram machine freely moving around and due to the vibrations of turning it will easily move around your workbench now some of you may have noticed that 73 centimeters does not equal 14 inches the dimensions in the title of the lathe actually refer to the maximum dimension of a piece that would fit in between the lathe centers i.e no chuck the lathe comes with a tail stock center but you would need to buy a headstock sensor and a lathe dog and driver if you did that you could theoretically turn a piece that was 14 inches long but turning between sensors is quite impractical and it takes quite a lot of time to set it up so most people will use a chuck of some sort as standard the lathe will come with an eighty millimeter three jaw scroll chuck the jaws all move together and it is great for holding round and hex stock these are super convenient but in gaining convenience the chuck has cost us a good 50 millimeters of workspace and it only gets worse from there when you turn long material the part will tend to push away from the cutter a live center is then used to add rigidity to the piece it's just a hardened cone in a ball bearing that fits into the tail stock and when it's used the work area will quickly shrink to about 260 millimeters and if you need to use a chuck to hold a twist drill the workspace can be as little as 160 millimeters long when it's fitted with a 13 millimeter twist drill my point being is just because it says 14 inches long doesn't mean you can actually turn 14 inches worth of material however in the two years that i've owned this lathe i haven't yet run into a situation where i've run out of space for turning if you're turning material below 20 millimeters in diameter you can also stick the material through the chuck and down the spindle bore for extra length although if there is too much stick out at the other end the material will need to be supported likewise the 7 inch maximum diameter part is a little bit optimistic with this lathe with the jaws flipped the maximum part that the 80 millimeter chuck can turn is 80 millimeters and if you're using an arbor to hold the part anything over 120 millimeters in diameter will actually hit the cross slide and anything above 130 millimeters in diameter is really reaching the limits of the cross slides travel for facing and speaking of facing for large diameter parts a carriage lock is really necessary to keep the carriage locked and rigid but in a bid to keep the costs down these lathes actually don't come with one however these lays are just so easy to improve and make modifications on with the improvements really increasing the cutting ability of the lathe there are so many great communities and tutorials out there and in my opinion the low cost of these machines really encourages you to test out these modifications let me put it this way if the lathe cost four or five figures there is no way that i would even be thinking of modifying it though to be fair if the lathe cost four or five figures i probably wouldn't need to though it must be said there is something very rewarding when you use a modification that you've made and it works really well before we move on when i had the chuck off the spindle i used a dial indicator to measure the run out or eccentricity of the spindle every lathe is going to have some eccentricity or run out and the import lathe is no exception and it's about 10 or so microns which is a lot better than i expected after two years with the stock bearings with the stock 3 jaw chuck on the run out has jumped to about 40 microns which i think is acceptable for everyday hobby use 40 microns however may be too much for making o-ring seals or tight fitting pistons and cylinders and you can easily reduce the run out by buying an independent four-jaw chuck with an independent four jaw chuck you can easily dial out the eccentricity although it must be said it can take a while to do it if you are new to using forge or chucks and thankfully replacement chucks only cost about fifty dollars they they're quite affordable and as well as that there are also scroll four jaw chucks which i also own and they are great for holding square stock but they have the same run out issues as the stock 3 jaw chuck one big annoyance that i do have with this lathe is the mounting system for the chuck the chucks are held on by nuts and bolts and the spacing to actually thread the nut onto the bolt is about 15 millimeters thankfully i really have to change the chucks but since i got my four jaw chuck it's happening more often than it used to and it's a pretty frustrating and time consuming process to actually change over the chucks it's a small issue but it really is one that gets under your skin moving on to the tail stock this is where you're going to put your center your jacob's chuck your live center and any other tail stock tools the taper in the tail stock is a morse 2 taper which is very common now when you buy your lathe you will have the option to get a lever and cam locking tail stock or a nut and bolt locking one and ten times out of ten i would recommend that you go with the cam blocking version not only is it so much quicker to lock and unlock the tail stock but with the limited amount of space that you have on a mini lathe usually you're going to run into problems such as the lever for the top slide is going to be in the way which makes tightening up the bolt really difficult and another issue i've run into is every now and then i accidentally hit the tail stock with the wrench as i'm tightening up the bolt which actually knocks the tail stock out of line with the center of the spindle and the biggest issue that i ran into was after a year all the threads on the bolt completely stripped in fact the only reason why i have this version is it's the more common version you'd find on c glades and it simply didn't occur to me when i bought it now on the bottom of the tail stock is going to be this bolt and it's used to adjust the tail stock to align it with the center of the spindle they do an okay job at aligning it at the factory but it's best to check it when you get it out of the box and once you do that it's best to use some thread lock on the bolt to keep it in place next let's quickly talk about the bed and the ways the bed is going to be made from a grey cast iron with the ways being ground into shape and it represents the main bulk of weight of these lathes and for most work it's certainly going to be rigid enough unsurprisingly though the bed isn't hardened so you should try your best to keep the bed in as best condition as you can you should keep the bed well oiled with an iso 68 whey oil and keep it free of chips and if you can don't drop any tools on it now the carriage of this lathe is quite basic we have our carriage hand wheel the cross slide hand wheel the top slide and the tool post and down the bottom we have a half nut lever and one thing that surprised me when i first got a hold of this lathe was the lack of a dial on the carriage wheel for fine work so any precise work needs to be done with a layout fluid and a scribe or a pair of calipers or the top slide dial and the carriage lock however the top slide has a one millimeter pitch lead screw so any large work using it will be out of the question the top slide is therefore best used for cutting angles and tapers and on both legs to change the top slide angle requires the undoing of one or two nuts but due to the limited room the nuts are located underneath the slide which is pretty annoying to get to especially if you're using a dial indicator to get a very precise cutting angle if you don't need to be too precise with your angles there is a guide mounted on the compound but it only measures up to 45 degrees and for most precise work i really recommend using a protractor which does the job perfectly the cross slide on the lathe is great it's well built it's smooth and the gibbs work really well on it the best upgrade to make on it to make it even better is to replace this solid handle that is fitted as standard to one that can freely rotate i've seen several different designs of handles with bushings but i've just kept it simple this is just a bolt in a hollowed out piece of plastic fitted to an acrylic wheel and that works fine my only complaint of the lathe is the choice of dials used the lathe uses divisions of 25 thousandths of a millimeter on a one millimeter pitch lead screw i believe they did it because 25 thousandths is equal to 1 of an inch but it really isn't and as a result you need to do maths differently in your head to work out how far to advance the cross slide for example 20 divisions of 25 thousandths is equal to half a millimeter of movement which will reduce the parts diameter by one millimeter it is a little bit convoluted you do get used to it after a while but thankfully there are aftermarket dials with different divisions such as divisions of hundredth of a millimeter which make a lot more sense as standard the lathe will come with a four-way tool post which is suited for eight millimeter tall cutting tools and whilst it isn't essential i really recommend replacing it with a quick change tool post it allows you to quickly swap in and out different tools and it allows you to use tools that are up to 12 millimeters in height so let's talk about the lead screw the lead screw runs off the spindle via a gear trainer the lathe comes with a chart and a set of spare gears and the ratio of the gear train that you use will determine how far the carriage will move with every revolution of the spindle this is used for cutting threads in a work piece i use these carbide threading tools and they have cut into plastic brass aluminium and fine pictures into steel with no issues whatsoever the threads are quite accurate on this machine i've never had any issues with them but due to the large amount of current required by the motor to cut the threads at low rpm deep cuts will cause the motor to quickly stall personally i stick to using pre-made bolts or threaded rod since factory made bolts are a lot stronger due to the work hardening due to the forming process of threads and if i ever need to cut bolts i try to stick to using a tap and die but if i have to use the lathe i will use the lead screw and the results are pretty good the big advantage for using the lead screw to cut threads is you can easily make non-standard threads for example i needed to quickly make a m6.75 by 0.7 tap and that was very useful and i also needed to make left-handed threads which this lathe can also make another issue with this lathe is that it doesn't come with a threading dial meaning you have to reverse the lathe keep the half nut engaged to keep the tool cutting in the same groove now this lathe uses acid or gears which is fine for light use but if i was to use this lathe often for cutting threads i'd opt to buy a set of metal gears acidal is fine but they certainly can crack under heavy loads the mechanism for holding and aligning the gear terrain also leaves a lot to be desired to get good meshing gears can be pretty tricky and it would be very annoying if you needed to swap gears in and out quite often now a topic with some contention is do these lathes have a power feed well yes but actually no the lead screw can be used as a power feed many people do it i've seen it i've used it a few times however in most circumstances on most materials it's just too fast the feed of 0.4 millimeters per revolution is the slowest you can get which is 400 faster than the feed on the lathe that i learned on and the motor just doesn't have enough grunt to do any practical machining at any practical depth using this feed and furthermore most lathes will have a separate power feed and drive shaft with separate ratios to the pitch and lead screw and use a drive box in the carriage to drive the feed this is done so the lead screw isn't worn down over time and that's my biggest issue the lead screw and half nut is going to produce quite a fair amount of wear on the lead screw and once it wears down the lead screw is probably going to be out of whack it isn't designed to be used as a power feed if you use it as a power feed every now and then i'm sure there's no issue with it but if you use it as a power feed all the time you're going to get a fair amount of wear next let's talk about the motor because this is the area that's going to see a lot of deviation between the types of mini lathes the cx3 uses a 350 watt dc brushed motor with a high and low gear selector and i've seen lathes of this design come with a 400 watt 500 watt or 600 watt motor some of them have high low gears some of them are brushless some of them are brushed there is a lot of variation and generally speaking the dc motors that are used have some big advantages for one the variable speed drive controllers allow them to easily change the rpm with the use of the dial on the front and the motors are quite compact but still powerful and even though it's only a 350 watt motor because of the high low gear selector you're going to get a fair amount of mechanical advantage which means this lathe can surprisingly cast a fair amount more than you would expect from a 350 watt motor however it's generally accepted that you might need to sacrifice the correctly calculated or optimal surface speeds to get a decent cut e and some harder materials desi motors have great torque at low rpm but they have really bad efficiency due to the back emf and at low rpm the motor requires a large current which the control board simply can't supply so they simply trip and stop when the current gets too high for this reason you do need to run the lathe at a higher rpm to get good motor efficiency that's why when i turn metal i tend to turn at a higher rpm so the motor is running more efficiently than it would be at lower rpm in doing this i do tend to produce a lot more heat than i normally would and i do sacrifice the tool life a little bit but that is the compromise for having a small motor next let's talk about the quality of parts that this lathe can produce and in my opinion the quality of parts can be plotted on a graph and it will go up with respect to how much effort you put back into the legs though the more that you put into it results in diminishing returns here's what i mean for the factory these lathes are assembled but they aren't really what i'd call precise what you need to do is you need to adjust the gives because they tend to be pretty loose and same for the retaining strips on the bottom of the carriage the backlash adjustment needs to be tightened in on the cross slide and the adjustment on the tail stock needs to be dialed in too if you do these small steps the quality and repeatability of the parts that you get from the lathe will go way up but the amount of effort that you put in isn't too great other improvements such as replacing the gibbs altogether lapping the bed ways will also improve the quality but the improvements to the parts also increases although i'm not saying that they aren't necessary but i'm just saying is the quality that you get out of the box isn't definitive of what you can get from the lathe finally let's talk about reliability because reliability is a problem with stuff that you get from input machines so first of all it must be said the quality that i get from this lathe is certainly not definitive of the quality that you might get from this lathe the quality certainly does vary and that's just a trade-off that you need to accept when you're buying a 600 live the best thing that you can do is buy from a reputable importer with a good warranty but in terms of the lathe itself there really isn't all that much to go wrong with it i mean there's very little on this lathe i did mention the threads stripping out on the tail stock earlier and that was an easy fix and a giant chunk is missing from the table stock hand wheel though it is my fault because i did drop it but there really isn't all that much to go wrong one thing that a lot of people do suggest is to replace the bearings in the housing with tapered roller bearings and whilst it is saying that i probably will do in the future like i said earlier i have had very little issues with the machine and after two years of use the run out on the spindle is less than 10 microns though i guess i am glossing over the elephant in the room and has to do with the electronics the chinese power board on my lathe blew a resistor and it took out the whole board and this occurred during threading when i needed a lot of current at low rpm and i think a current surge when i started threading took out the board and for such an inexpensive lathe the circuit boards are actually quite expensive they were something like 200 australian so instead of replacing it i've gone and replaced it with an ac motor which has a lot of benefits which i will have a video on sometime soon but overall the circuit board is not a huge issue yes it has happened to other people but it's not saying that is really common with people with these mini legs overall i can say i am really happy about owning this mini lathe through the highs and lows i can say it's been a total blast to have machined on it if these things didn't exist i probably wouldn't have gotten a life at all it fits in my small workshop and it really punches above its weight sure it does have limitations like it can't cut all that much steel but it really doesn't matter i have had a lot of fun on this they are really worth it and with that i hope you enjoyed it hope you learned something thank you very much for watching

Channel: Artisan Makes

Views: 257,565

Rating: 4.9030538 out of 5

Keywords: Mini lathe, Mini Lathe review, review, chinese, chinese mini lathe, import, import lathe, import mini lathe, sieg, sieg c3, sieg mini lathe, metal lathe, metal mini lathe, metal worker, harbor freight, grizzly, grizzly lathe, G0765 7x14 Mini Lathe, G0765, 7x14, 7x14 mini lathe, worth it, is it worth it, tested, is a mini lathe worth it, cheap, is it any good, 2 year review

Id: rHajnIraFQM

Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021