[TheForge] OT - Advise needed on mini machine tool

[James Binnion]

Bruce ,
The biggest problem with small machine tools is the lack of rigidity.  
If you are cutting wax this tool will probably work fine, aluminum  
maybe, steel is going to require very tiny feeds or the chatter will  
make for worthless parts, dull tools and frustration on your part. The  
cheapest small machine tools that you can really use right out of the  
box are the Sherline tools. They suffer from the rigidity problem just  
due to their lack of mass but are well enough made that you can get  
useable parts from them but you still have the miniscule feed rates to  
deal with. They will set you back about $1200 for both a lathe and  
mill. The Chinese mini machine tools like the one you linked to are  
just too sloppily made to work very well. There are small precision  
lathes and mills like the Levin but they start at around 10K so you  
can buy a lot of lathe in full size used for that kind of money


James Binnion
jbin at well.com