Top 5 things I wish I knew before purchasing a Mini Lathe. Perspective from being new to the hobby.

welcome back uh this is a little bit different of a video this time um something that I've wanted to do with a video series was to talk about two different topics um so this will be two different videos two two a two-part Series so to speak they won't be back to back or anything like that but something that I wanted to share were two topics and one of them is you know a top five things you should know before you buy a mini lathe and then a top five things you're gonna purchase or want to purchase after you buy a mini lathe so this video is going to be the top five things that I think you should know before you actually click the Buy It Now button on eBay or the add to cart button on Amazon or go to vivore or go to Harbor Freight or wherever you're going to go and buy one of these things so um that's what this video is going to be about now before we get to that I've got my shop code on it's the Midwest it's winter it's cold got the heater on gonna watch some Thursday Night Football um just a good night to be in the garage but I do want to cover this topic so this the intended audience for this are people who are having they're new new to the Hobby they have an interest in learning and working with their hands and they really want to get into the hobby Machining and they've never worked in a machine shop before they don't have any equipment they don't have any knowledge of how all this stuff works that's where I came from I just had an interest I'm like that looks cool that looks like fun I want to work with my hands so that's where the perspective of this video is coming from I want you to understand that and for those experienced out there hopefully you can kind of look back and laugh and think and relate to when you first got into this Hobby and those that are new I hope you find Value in this before you actually purchase the product so that you can actually put some thought more thought than I did into it before you actually make that purchase so I did make notes for this video um because I want to cover everything and I'm going to forget some things I'm going to try I tried my best to write everything down that that I think that I wanted to know and cover that I would have liked to known before I bought this thing um with that being said I don't regret the purchase I love I love it I'm having a great time I'm having you know I've met a lot of good people who are helpful it's a really cool Community it's a good it's a fun hobby to get into I encourage you to do it um but you need to know these things before you get into it um hopefully this helps you out so um number I'm gonna go one through five with five being I think one of the most important aspects to understand but all these are important things for you to keep in mind before you purchase a mini lathe from my perspective as someone who's never purchased never worked in a machine shop and never done any of this so without delaying this any further number one re understand that additional money is going to be required you're not going to find this thing for 500 700 800 500 if you go with the cheapest 9.99 1500 whatever you decide to buy whatever your budget that's not going to be the end of it again keep this in mind that this is from somebody who didn't work in a machine shop I don't have Machine Tools I don't have any anything you know I got home tools to work and fix and repair the home that's it so you are going to need extra money after you purchase the initial price of whatever lathe it is you get I don't care how much it is you're going to need half again as much maybe twice as much so expect to spend a minimum of 500 more dollars on tooling and additional tools and and things that you're going to want to add to the Hobby understand that number two there will be quality issues there's going to be quality issues with the lathes they're going to range from cosmetic issues to functional issues don't buy one of these unless you understand that and accept it there's cosmetic there's one right here the front panels are installed and they're they're re-drilled it's just terrible terrible terrible quality there's in the castings there's pitting there's they just don't care but then again think about what you what you paid for it right you're not paying 5 10 15 grand for one of these things so you're getting what you get so understand the quality issues going to be there and you're going to have to Tinker with it to make it better accept it now number three workspace and safety before you buy one of these understand that these things can be dangerous I don't I'm guilty of not always following the correct procedures and rules but it can't be understated how important safety is safety glasses this stuff there's little shards of metal going everywhere it can get in your eyeballs you don't need to go buying for doing just a fun little hobby hearing protection some of this stuff squeals it's very loud put some earplugs in um think about your workspace you want something comfortable at a comfortable height to work with you want to be able to get to it you want to be able to get to all sides of it you want to be able to mount the lathe to your workbench so that it's as stable as it can be you know it's going to throw chips everywhere make sure that you you're okay with wherever you place it for having that mess being thrown around you're gonna excuse me you're gonna get some oil thrown here and there keep in mind where you want this thing mounted so workspace and safety that's something you should know what you're going to do with this lathe if you if you buy one of these and it shows up on your doorstep we're gonna put the thing it's heavy have somebody help you pick it up safety so um just one thing I want to point out a lot of people have mentioned this and I'm guilty of it but again from the get-go make sure that you have a home for this Chuck key doesn't matter what kind you have but do not leave it in your chat you turn this thing on and that thing goes flinging across the room at work at Best it's going to break a window in your car or or put a hole in the wall at worst it's going to knock you in the head it's going to knock you out this thing is a projectile don't get in the habit of leaving this thing in your Chuck find a home for it put it away every time you're done using it don't leave it in your drill or your lathe chuck keep that in mind develop good habits from the get-go know that before you get into this Hobby uh number four something that I didn't realize was as important as it is again I didn't work in a machine shop I don't understand all this I didn't realize all this but terminology understand the proper terminology and learn how to speak the language of a proper machinist there is there's there's measurement terminology you have uh part parts of the lathe that you want to have your terminology correct when you start working with people in the industry or people that want to help you and you're trying to communicate the problems you're having you're going to want to know what all these components are to describe what your problems are so they can offer the prop the proper help and solutions they're people are so helpful but some of them get annoyed when you start calling things in proper terms it's it's kind of a pride thing I believe in the industry or people that have put in the effort to learn all the proper terms and and ways to do things you come in as a brand new person and you're calling things you're making the same dumb newbie mistakes and you're calling things uh terms that they're not make the effort to do some research and figure out what the terminology and the components and everything are I'll give you some examples um something that that I found examples of things that I found important as I was working through this I've heard the term Morse taper I knew what Morris tapers were but I didn't really know just to to what extent how important that was so these lathes all have Morse tapers depending on what lathe you have you're gonna have different Morris tapers my particular tail stock has a Morse tape or two why is that important when you go to buy accessories for this tail stock you've got to make sure you get a Morse taper too uh designed product in order for it to fit in this tail stock now let's go to the other end the headstock if I want to buy a collet Chuck or a forge or something that that is a Morse tapered I have to get in Moore's taper five so do the research on the product you're going to buy and learn what tapers you might have worse taper 2 Morse taper five depends on what I want to buy and add on to this thing I need to know those things um Fasteners people get kind of frustrated with this too it depends on if you're from the UK or from the United States but the these little guys here the things up here the things I've been struggling with they're called Gibbs in the United States with a geek a g Gib it's okay to call them jibs if you're in the UK so there's no right or wrong way but depending on where you're at there is people who get annoyed by how you pronounce these things these screws here the the US they're referred to as cap head screws they got a little cap on the top of the screws so it's kind of easy to remember cap head screws these these the screws that go inside these uh recessed holes these are set screws or grub screws if you're in the UK um those are just some different uh different things that I've learned throughout the last six months of working with this hobby um parts of the lathe you want to learn the parts of the lathe all this you can do without buying one of these things tail stock head stock lathe check lays bed Carriage I call this the whole thing the The Carriage here's the apron on the carriage you have your cross slide and then you have your top slide you have a quick change tool post or a tool post that came with it is a it's not quite change but there's a tool post that's that's what's bounded up here you have your variable speed controls here your e-stop or emergency stop up top forward and reverse controls your gearing is back behind this side here depending on what lathe you get most of them let you change gears out for threading uh then there's a thread chart and everything on the front of your lathe you have your feed screw your your lead screw I think is what it's called a lot of times um you have a locking Carriage lock mechanism up here on this side just learn and understand pay attention a lot of videos that are out there they describe all this stuff you know chip pan just different things like that um oh the other thing spindleboard spindleboard is uh how large a material you can put through your lathe chuck through the headstock so let's say you have a three-quarter inch spindleboard the biggest material that you can have longer than let's say your your lathe chop which is what four or six inches or so would be a quarter inch or anything bigger than a quarter inch three quarter inches that's that's as big as you can do about four or five six inches if you have a larger spindleboard you can run that you can let's say you have a two foot piece of material you can run it all the way through the headstock so keep that in mind depending on what you want to do with this Hobby you know what's important to you and maybe that doesn't matter so as you buy these things pay attention to those things uh finally with when it comes to terminology measurement this is something I struggle with again I didn't grow up in a machine shop I didn't know uh measuring and all that terminology I just seen it I thought oh that's easy it's not you know it takes practice you don't struggle excuse me learn that everything is on the SAE side standard American you're kind of looking at everything's measured in thousands thousandths of an inch so I mean you do have fifths uh or tenths sorry so that's if you want to get really really really accurate with your measurements but you want to start speaking in terms of the thousands you know twenty thou ten thou fifty thou a hundred thou that's the kind of measurements that you're going to be removing from Material you're going to be measuring on material you know one inch that's a thousand thousandths so learn how to read that learn how to speak that language and then when you start working with other people who want to help you they're going to be able to you're going to be able to speak the language with them and relay information and understand what needs to be done in the particular project you're working on if you as long as you can speak the same language um yeah so these lathes all come in metric keep that in mind but I don't really use the dials that are in metric I use my caliper and things like that to measure but again you know both measurements are something to be aware of because you're going to deal with fasteners that are either in metric or standard American so learn them both um fine uh number five and finally the number five thing that I think you should know before you purchase a leave is research the types of tooling and accessories for the projects that you might want to tackle again when I purchase this I didn't know what kind of tools I might need I didn't I don't know any of that stuff so once I got this thing I quickly realized crap I'm gonna need more stuff and this goes back to number one you're gonna spend more money keep that in mind but types of tools and things that you should know about before you buy one of these are you get braised carbide that's the things that came with this sleeve that's these uh these wonderful blue sometimes they're different colors but this is generally what you're going to get when you purchase a mini lathe is the braised carbide tool it's fine but you got to remember there's things you need to do to these before you use them it's not ready to go out of the box high-speed Steel high-speed steel is another type of tooling you can purchase this you can grind it it's custom it's more affordable than the carbide inserts which we'll talk about in a second so I I highly encourage anyone getting into this to just understand you're going to buy some of this and you're going to play around with this too you can make all kinds of shapes um definitely something that makes part of this hobby fun carbide insert tools that's the indexable type of tooling that you can get let's see if I can bring this up here so you can take a screw off you can rotate these oftentimes you'll have two or three sometimes Four cuttable Corners that you can rotate through in a particular insert these do become costly over time because you're you know as they get gold you just rotate them and eventually you throw them away you got to buy more the benefit is they're easy they're pre-ground they got chip Cutters built into them there's there's a benefit to having them and if you don't go through a lot of Cutters maybe that's the way to go I kind of like using both I like using the carbide inserts and the the high speed stool for me the high speed tool all of this is fun and entertaining and part of my hobby I want to learn all of it so I'm I'm wanting to use all the tooling all the different kinds that I can um let's see uh parting tools here's another one so you're going to want to you're gonna need a parting tool at some point when you're working with material and that's a thin blade that will cut your your material that you're working with off and uh just know that you're gonna probably want that that type of a blade too A lot of that stuff doesn't come with the lathe when you purchase it um knurling tool thread cutting boring bars again a lot of that you get a small kind of a cheap variation of that stuff with the lathe you know here's a boring bar example that came with it but you know some of that stuff you're going to want to upgrade right away um so that that's kind of your tool Cutters center drill bits if you're going to use a tail stock you're going to want to get like a drill check um or a live Center and you're going to want to be able to drill a center drill you know you're going to need some center drill bits if you don't have that stuff so just understand that those are all the kinds of tools that you're going to want to you need to know you don't get that stuff with most blades you're going to have to know that that stuff exists out there and that there's a good chance that you're gonna be a want to be aware that I'm going to probably want to get all this stuff um tool posts something you that I didn't know again I bought this thing green I didn't know anything about this it comes with a tool post I liked the tool post it came with but something that you don't know is it's not it requires shims to Center your cutting your cutting blade so if we go back to our cutting blade you know when you're cutting and facing off material this needs to be centered up with your material in order to get a proper face cut or work them through your material the the tool poster that it came with requires you to take some Thin shim material and shim up your tool cutter height until you get it to be centered on your material I don't have shim material I mean I got some scrap flat pieces of aluminum and and cardboard and this and that you can jam it in there but I thought well that's a pain I don't want to do that every time I want to change a tool cutter out so the first thing that I wanted to upgrade was my tool post and I wanted to get a quick change tool post that leads me to the next thing don't just search Amazon for a tool post a quick change tool post and buy the first one that shows up you're going to find one that's less than 30 bucks it's going to be a tiny little aluminum one that is not substantial it's not going to be great it'll work for a while but you'll quickly want to upgrade it slow down use the one that came with it if you can shove some aluminum or shim stock or something in there until you can thoroughly think about do some research find some other videos watch some of my videos on my new tool post and find out what for your lathe what tool quick change to a post you're going to want to get foreign for this size lathe the wedge type quick change tool post that's made out of steel the this particular size is AXA that's something you're going to want to know before you purchase this stuff there's different sizes of these you have 0xa which is the smallest one which is probably half the size of this one it seems very puny on the lathe if you watch some of my previous videos You'll see examples of that this is an AXA then there's a bxa a cxa and so on they get bigger and bigger for professionals and large machines and you know nothing like that generally you're going to either go with the zero hex a or the AXA for these small machines the AXA is only going to work on a bigger of the smaller machines if that makes sense you you put one of these on the really small ones the six inch or the seven inch it's probably Overkill personally I like it but when you buy this thing your quick your tool holders all of these things I was showing you these are sized for that particular tool holder too so if I went with the zero XA these things are quite a bit smaller same with the bxa or the cxa these are going to be much bigger keep that in mind your your tool holders are sized for the size of tool post that you have so keep all that in mind you're probably going to want to switch to a quick change tool post the biggest benefit is centering if you look here on these you have this adjustable screw and that can just quickly adjust your height and it's repeatable every single time makes it good for beginners so I recommend it some people don't need it I like it um and finally with parts and this is still part of the research the types of accessories you're going to want this is number five my biggest category for things you're going to want to know top five things you're going to want to know before you purchase one of these layers is Metrology I sound like I know what I'm talking about when I say that word but you're gonna need if you don't have this stuff you're going to need calipers you're going to need measurement tools you're going to need a micrometer perhaps you're going to need a six inch rule machinist rule you're going to need maybe a machinist Square you're going to need a you're going to need different measurement Tools digital versus analog decide what you want to get you can start out cheap I don't recommend you go too cheap because you're going to quickly realize that's too cheap I want to buy another one so spend apologize spend a little bit of extra money and get something you don't need to go and spend stair quality tools just to get into this but spend a little extra money and get get some decent products in order especially when you're around the calipers you're going to use calipers all the time just understand that you're going to need measurement tools dial indicators You're Gonna Know You're gonna need to know that you're going to want dial indicators because you're going to want to check the run out of your material as it's spinning is it centered inside your drill chuck or your lathe chuck when you spin it you want to get it as concentric and centered as possible in these these dial indicators are going to help you do that so you're going to want to get something like that um something that you should be aware of and I will I'm going to cover this more on the next video but you got to pay attention all these you know you don't just buy a dial indicator if you get one things like the stem that has a certain size this one's 3 8. a lot of the smaller ones are eight millimeter I didn't know that until I bought it so if you buy a MAG base which you're going to want to get to mount it to your lathe in order to mount it and do whatever it is you're doing you can't Mount this thing in the wrong sized mag base so all these things you're going to want to know before you go and buy one of these you're going to want to buy all that stuff you're going to want to get all that you're going to want to know a lot of the lingo and the terminology when you first start getting set up with this because you're going to have a lot of questions and I mean that kind of brings me to an end of this particular video again this is a different video I don't usually get on camera but I wanted to for this one it's just me trying to talk and I'll try to put some bullet points and stuff up here on the video but I do have one bonus one bonus recommendation you should know before you get into this you need to be good at fixing things you need to be good at troubleshooting and you need to be open-minded to other people who want to share ideas and thoughts and suggestions and feedback for help I've been very open-minded I've gotten such incredible help from others out there I you know go into it with that same attitude and you're gonna have a great time watch there's a bunch of channels out there watch my Channel watch the other channels there's a lot of good content things that you might not realize it'll cover it before you go and jump in and spend the money on it it may sway you one way or the other if you want to get into it but overall knowing these things I think would have helped me prior to purchasing the lathe wouldn't have changed it I still would have bought it I'm glad I did but it certainly would have helped if I had known these items prior to purchasing this late I'm going to call that a video here uh it's holiday time Merry Christmas I appreciate you watching I appreciate you subscribing if you're not subscribed please do I'm trying to expand my channel just something I want to do personal goal um and if you have any comments or suggestions or other advice for people watching this put it down in the comments they're going to find it useful thanks for watching and I hope to see you on the next one

Channel: DEEZ Workshop

Views: 45,282

Keywords: VEVOR, Mini Lathe, Lathe, Machinist, Machining, Hobby, Workshop, Metal turning, Unboxing, DIY, Home Repairs, Review, Tools, Quick Change, Post, Index, inserts, carbide, tungsten, tail, stock, education, entertainment, metal work, precision, dial indicator, round bar, steel, aluminum, brass, tail stock, live center, drill chuck, tool post, variable speed, how to, how to fix, how to setup, how to repair, how to make, maker, make, garage, blog, recycle, top 5, wish, should, would, list, top list, bonus, have

Id: tHshoSRS_4Q

Length: 29min 7sec (1747 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022