All-metal Miniature Lathe 36W 20000rpm Didactical Mini metal Lathe Machine for Hobbyist Woodworking Craft

The maximum one can put in the existing 3-jaw chuck is 15mm or 1.5" in diameter. The instructions are terrible. To move the tailstock, loosen the bottom two screws by the tailstock and the allen screw in the channel under the tailstock. You CAN get tools for it. The same guy that sold this one sells them. It works but do not try to turn steel. Stick to wood, copper,aluminium and plastic. The tailstock probably takes an M15 chuck. The tongue gets a bit wobbly if it's extended more than an inch. The tool that arrived with mine looked burnt and it was missing a T nut and bolt. None of those are big issues. This is a good product for home robotics. I recommend pairing this with the milling machine.

I bought this to turn chess pieces and so far (prototypes), it works for that. The instruction manual isn't great, so I've spent a lot of time just tinkering with the bits to see what happens.I did figure out something that might help the commenter about fitting pieces. You can reverse the holders (compare her pictures to mine) to get a grip on bigger things. If you open the chuck all the way, you can take out the holders and turn them around. Be careful to load them back in order (there is a number on each, see the picture) and then close the chuck back down. Now you are using the stepped side and can hold bigger pieces.The included fixed cutting tool works fine, but you'll want more tools for versatility. It would be nice if the company took advantage of the modularity of the design to sell modules separately. For 2 examples, (1) one of the other kits has stands under the turning parts to make the whole thing taller and able to accommodate even bigger pieces and (2) there is a mini tool rest sold with one of the other kits that I would buy separately if I could (as it is I cobbled together my own).That's it. This is a a toy more or less, but it has been a useful one for hobby use, like mine. It's not perfect, but I don't regret buying it even a little, really

Couldn't even do a small aluminum fitting i just needed to turn down. Tried higher speed and very slow feed rate and it struggled. May be good for jewelry or model parts.

I figured this would be good for some small tasks, but it isn't really up to any of them.I started out trying to make some aluminum spacers. No matter how much I crank on the jaws, my material loosens up.There is no parting tool, so I made my own. That worked out ok, but the depth of cuts it can take on aluminum is sooo small that it's not worth my time.This $150 lathe tool had me spend 4 hours trying to make 2 spacers that a harbor freight mini lathe could have knocked out in 15 minutes.

Worth the price

it's small and has little power consuption, it's not gonna cut steel, but i've tried aluminum and brass without issue, and if you're just trying to see if machining is for you it's great, even for simple things like wooden chess pieces. If you're a serious machinist then it's a great toy as i use it. Don't expect it to run like a larger lathe and you'll be happy. expect results from it as though it's something it isn't and you'll disappoint yourself quickly. it's not my G&L 570t but it's fun!

It's my first lathe - I just needed something small for hobby/craft type stuff. The quality is amazing and much better than the other $130 red mini lathe I returned. The jaws on the chuck are reversible, if it doesn't turn smoothly the 3 teeth weren't installed/inserted back in order (they're labeled 1-3 and order depends which way you're using the chuck). The included cutting tool is questionable, but it was able to cut aluminum much better than I could ghetto rig on my drill, lol. 10/10 for the build quality and value. Someone experienced will likely want something beefier, but for me it's perfect so far.

This will be a good buy if you want a lathe to make beads and non-precise crafty stuff. If you want a mini-lathe to do precise machining, this is a NO-NO.The first thing I observed was that the bar of wood they shipped as a starter piece could not fit into the chuck without the jaws stopping on the bed. I had to do some modifications to make better use of the chuck—I cut away a portion of the bed that is under the chuck so I could machine things with larger diameters.The second thing is the chuck itself: it tightens less to the front and tapers in towards the back. In other words, the inner faces of the jaws close before the outer ends. This causes a lot of vibration and jarring during heavier cuts, and the work tends to slide out. I don't know how to fix that problem. The chuck is of poor quality, and the metal seems very soft.Thirdly, the cut is tapered, not cutting parallel. So a machined bar of 3 inches will have a diameter difference of 3 to 5 thousandths of an Inch from the tail-centre to the chuck. That is a little too much for a mini-lathe for me.One would expect that a mini-lathe would have some semblance of precision, but not this one.