Top Tips For Chinese Mini Lathes
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- I have been lucky to be able to use my Chinese Sieg C3 mini lathe for over one and a half years as of filming this video with great results. These mini lathes are a solid piece of kit and for under $1,000 are great for hobby machinists or people without the ability to fit a full size lathe in their shed or workshop. Whilst they are a great tool, they do have their quirks in relation to their quality, and this is to be expected with the price you pay. In this video I have a list of tips that I thought would be helpful for anyone who is looking to buy, or has bought one of these mini lathes. These tips are the the result of me using this lathe almost daily since April 2019. I hope you find this video helpful.
I really like the tips that end with “and don’t ask me how I know”. I know because I have a lot of those too.
Thanks for the videos, entertainment, and educational wisdom.
Hi mate, I really like your videos. Having worked on lots of lathes over the years, I can very definitely say that bolting them down to an arbitrary flat surface will add rigidity but it'll also bend them out of straight. The way it should be done is to place the lathe on shims as close as you can get to filling any gaps underneath it, then take the lathe away and pack those shims in a polyester based filler, like isopon or what every you have in your country. Then place the lathe on that, clean up the extruded waste, wait for it to set and then after that bolt it down lightly. That way you get no distortion in the bed and your lathe only then needs levelling with a fine increment engineers level, and you'll be all good.
Helpful insight thanks
This has to be one of the most concise tips for a mini lathe I have seen, nicely done. Unlike many you have not assumed a full strip down and rebuild is in order!
My mini lathe is cnc so not quite applicable. However, a couple of ideas, for lathes with little power the carbide inserts for aluminium work well on aluminium and steel. Brass may be another matter as the high rake may lead to the tool being drawn into the material faster than intended, in other words it can grab. They may not last too long on steel but they are very cheap these days, so worth a try. Centre drills are great for making a centre pocket, but use a spotting drill if just making a start for a hole. It is oh so easy to have the point fall off a centre drill which does not happen with a spotting drill.
If your tailstock is a pain and you have a QCTP make a holder for a chuck to hold drills and drill using the carriage, so much easier than winding a tailstock handle back and fore. If using carbide tooling remember, that non ferrous under 30 diameter can be run at 3000 plus rpm. That is just a statement, if the lathe does not have that high a speed just use whatever works for you. If you have to buy material be aware, that steel, aluminium and brass are available in what is known as machining grade. The aluminium in particular will not create those long unmanageable strings of swarf folks so often create. If a jobber length drill wobbles about too much there are drills known as stub drills which are much shorter and I can usually run those straight into the work piece without a spotting drill. Are the Sanou chuck jaws was not stamped with their number? That is a bit slack. I think that is about all I have to contribute. Thank you for putting such a sensible tips for the mini lathe out there.
some good information here cheers .
Great tips as I'm just starting in my mini lathe. Would like to see you post a vid on using the tail stock drilling technique you speak of....dont quite understand.
My Chinese mini lathe does not have an rpm indicator only a rheostat type knob. How do I overcome this?
@@alangriff1 I bought a cheap digital tachometer off ebay, works well and was not expensive, mine starts at 16 aud. Search hand held digital tachometer. Take a few readings and mark them around your rheostat knob.
Are you talking about NOT using the tailstock to drill? Use a holder that normally holds a boring bar and use it to hold a parallel shank ER 16 collet holder (or you can use a drill chuck) then you can hold drills. Set the centre height for the drill and find the centre along the cross slide. You can do this by first drilling a 10mm hole with the tailstock then place a 10mm rod in the new holder and find the centre in the X direction. You then note the position of the cross slide dial and you have the centre. Use any convenient drill and rod combination, nothing too small though as it will flex and make it difficult for you. Make sure screw backlash does not throw you off. Does this help?
Hi folks. If you use longer bolts to hold the lathe down then with some extra nuts and washers you can arrange to be able to adjust the bed to ensure that your new lathe turns parallel. Lots of videos on line about how to do this. Enjoy your new tool. BobUK.
Very Good! Another tip is to place a piece of foam under the headstock so chips are kept out. Another fellow Swarf Meister mentioned that a larger chuck will help the lath run smoother than a small one. Stay healthy my friend!
Maybe have a look at the backlash in the change gears to make sure they're adjusted properly, they tend to run quieter with the right adjustment
my Grizzly G8688 started surging on heavier cuts after 4 yrs of happy use. thanks to remind me I should look in to getting a new board.
thanks for the tips! even I know some of them, I enjoy hearing other's tips and experiences with our beloved little machines
Use a center punch ( . .. ... ....)to label the jaws and Chuck. 👆
Instead of using sharpie marker
Yes..I did just that
As you say, use a permanent way to ID the jaws.
But do mark it where it will not get in the way of any working surface area, as when punching on metal, it causes indentation & bruising/ Displacement
When tightening the locknuts, on the Gibb Screws, it's a good idea to keep the screws from moving, by holding them still, with the Allen Key.
Replacing the gears with metal ones is a good thing to do. However you might want to leave the one one the carriage drive shaft as plastic. That way if in a moment of inattention you run the carriage into the chuck, it rather than anything else will break, and it's pretty cheap to replace--another one of those " Don't ask me how I know that" things.
Some newer mini metal lathes like Eastwood 7x12 have a falt safty which immediately stops machine detecting collision however some things can still get damaged
These small lathe are mainly intended for new learners, and that is why they have plastic gears, so when you do crash the tool into the chuck is the gears will break instead of breaking the motor or shattering the jaws and many other parts that would cost a lot,
i do suggest in buying a spare set just in case, i have , But never needed to use yet and so I have been using my original set for other a 1000 hours of use
@Mike McGuire -- I LOVE that idea -- it's like a "sacrificial gear" as "fuse". Honestly, I keep ruminating in the back of my mind about ways to have fail-safe "auto-stops" to keep from running tools/carriages/etc. into spinning (thus invisible) chuck jaws -- kind of the metal-world equivalent of a "SawStop", although those are sacrificial brakes that save a *finger* and weld to the blade at a pretty high cost and definitely a one-time use. Your notion of just "break one cheap plastic gear" to prevent _[insert random Clash Of Metal Parts Under Torque and Flying Broken Objects here]_ is pretty good already... :-).
well it's a lathe ruclips.net/user/postUgkxN9zrzkkhnjUF5PQbuA_B1gYdsfCu9k6z but it wasn't what i would have anticipated. Headstock, tailstock, carriage apron are manufactured from aluminum now not cast iron. The spindle diameter for the bearings is too small allowing for a few play in the spindle so I am using some blue Loctite to take out the play.
Thanks!! The cross slide on my Warco mini lathe was wobbly, I’d looked at it, tried to work it out but couldn’t 🙄… that’s why I looked this video up and there was the answer!! Thank you - great video, really helpful 😀😀👍🏽
Great work guys...wish I had these skills they would come in handy for making parts for our motorbike builds!
Bolting down securely is very much underrated. If your bench is rock solid and stiff and the lathe bolted down with strong bolts, it greatly improves the stiffness.
Mine still wasn't totally rigid enough, so I bolted it down to a concrete paving slab 2ft sqr, 50mm thick and weighs 42kg its now as solid as a rock, no movement at all.
Thanks. Very helpful. I'll now unpack my new lathe 😊
Excellent vid! Earned a sub.
From my lathe I found that it's a kit put together to ship to you. When you get it, disassemble it for better cleaning and checking for areas of poor manufacturing, fitting and for sure, making sure all the adjustments are checked and redone properly. These are not set up for immediate operations.
Thank you for video.
My lathe came with a 3 jaw chuck. Each jaw is stamped with its number as well as the slots in the chuck have tiny dimples. 1 dimple for jaw 1 and so fourth. If yours is not this way you could use a hammer and center punch and put light dimples in the chuck and jaws. Less likely to clean off a small dimple then marker.
Thanks . I wish I had come across this information two years ago it is all old hack for me now but it’s good information for somebody just getting his many ways I hope it helps many people
Good tips :)
Replacing the plate that secures the tailstock to the underside of the ways with something thicker and to the correct size will make life with it so much better. Also, QCTP and flange-mount collet chuck.
Thanks for all of the info. However, you need to adjust your tail stock (drill rose upward when entering work piece). The chuck inserts are all numbered and the chuck has a manufacturer's mark for the number one insert (a center punch near the #1 insert slot makes it easier to identify).
Thanks for the response Rick. The tailstock was made slightly too low, I had to shim the tailstock up to get it in line with the spindle. Cheers
Excellent tips. The only thing I would add is before purchase, take a long look at the SC-4 sized bench top lathe. For the price difference it adds an enormous amount of capability.
Great video, all good tips, to add;
First priority: Change the gears to metal. All of them, the motor drive pulleys and the transmission gears, plus the lead screw gears - all of them.
I cannot stress this enough...
QCTP is a great addition.
Loctite the cross slide and top slide handles, they unthread when you use them if you don’t.
Adding a washer on the cross slide and top slide takes up a lot of slop.
Good info, however the part with the locitie on the handles, from what I have seen, the handles that come on the Sieg lathes vary differently to the ones that come on other mini lathes, which tend to unscrew. The sieg ones do not unscrew, which I was pretty glad about. Cheers
I have found that the Amadeal AMA210V-G lathe I bought four years to be accurate but I found that the 600 watt variable speed motor was not powerful enough particularly at low RPM. Perhaps that might be because I have been used to using tool room machines with motors rated at several Horse Power. They do represent good value and are a valuable addition to any workshop. If buying one go for a lathe with taper roller bearings in the head stock and metal feed gears rather than plastic.
Great - i have the same Lathe!
Who sells it please ?. I'm in Sydney.
Nice Aussie accent ! Reminds me of a Brit who spent a long time in Perth, WA, but I could be wrong. Otherwise, the various tips are useful, thanks.
I'm always amused whenever an English speaker remarks on the "accent" of another English speaker who doesn't have the same "accent" that they do. It's almost always a white American from virtually anywhere other than the Deep South or say Bronx/Brooklyn, remarking on how "cute" or "darling" the accent of someone from New Orleans, Mississippi, Scotland, 'stralia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, or wherever, is. What's doubly amusing/ironic is that often, the person making that remark has no clue that they have a whomping MinneSOHda (oh yah!), or Yewtah, or upstate-New York/PA thing (or what was made famous in Mare of Easttown and SNL as "Murder Durder"), or the insanely irritating vocal fry of a ton of Gen Y women in SoCal (and whoever followed KUWTK). It's funny - everybody thinks everybody ELSE has an accent but themselves. (Me, I grew up in the aforementioned Yewtah, which actually IS fairly close to GenAm pronunciation and I've moved around enough to have "newscaster voice" now - but I can't stand when people say "oh, so and so has an accent!" No they don't - they talk like where they're from - and so do you - and I.)
@@sumgai7 are you okay?
Put silicone grease on the plastic gears to quiet them down.
Another tip: replace the stock toolholder with an MultiFix or another quickchange holder. This makes the work so much more confortable. And the Multifix adds tons of regidity.
Nice 👍🏻
Thanks for the video, mate!
I noticed that the drill bit was lifted by the hole in the workpiece. Was the drill bent or is the tail stock out of alignment?
What I changed were the handles on the plastic hand wheels, sobthatbthey unscrew themselves. I turned a shaft to mount on the hand wheels and the handles are slipped over this shaft.
You are right about that, they issue is usually caused by one of two things. There is a bit of sag in the tailstock spindle when it is extended past 25 or 30mm with the heavy Jacobs chuck loaded, which I can put down to the quality of the tailstock. The other issue I have is with the nut locking tailstock, I can accidently bump it out of alignment with the spanner, although I do it much less frequently now then when I first got the lathe.
Merci
I got this really cheap blue china lathe over a year ago, had to do a lot of work on it to make it work and now... i'm almost at a point to give it up 😅 well, not at 'giving up' but i cant find much time and motivation to get more practice on this machine. Looking forward to see more video from you 🙋🏼♂️
This was nearly a mistake i made
Buying a cheap mini lathe,
Thanks to you tube I steered away and paid more for a mini lathe that is still made from china but has gone though the quality control and met to a high standard for the UK Machine mart shop
I would would just sell your one and buy a better quality one and start having fun on a lathe.
@@spudnickuk That's about the advise i give people that think about getting this lathe.... But im at a point i worked so much on my lathe, nobody would buy it and i think it is useable now... more or less 🤷🏼♂️
Looks like you added a different motor but still using the original control? It still must handle the current?
Hi gvet47.
I originally changed the motor around the time that the first control board broke. I originally planned to use the variable speed control board but in the end opted not to use it. The motor now is just a spare one that I ripped from an old drill press and is more powerful than the stock lathe motor. Ultimately the reason I decided this is because it is a fixed speed motor with a great amount of torque, so I machined up a belt drive system to run the lathe. Outside of the stuff I film here, I am always machining acrylic, so the pulley and belt drive allows me to machine at 2500rpm comfortably, and much quieter than I could with the stock motor. And to be honest, machining at anything higher than 1500 rpm with the stock motor was a little scary due to the noise it made.
Cheers
Another tip. Change that tool post to something like what I got ( T37 Quick Change tool post set )
I did upgrade the standard tool post to the Aluminium one that you have.
Cutting was ok with the cheap tool post, but I could never get a perfect height when changing tools , and noticed the brass lock of screw was not sitting level and the tools and tool post is a sloppy fit, and when using the parting tool the centre line kept on changing/moving, so the only parting that worked was me from using it!
Anyway now with a higher quality tool post everything is more sturdy and now the parting tool works perfectly, and all other turning is superb.
So i would not recommend the cheap Aluminium tool post and would use the money to get a T37 type
In general how does one set up a boring bar to guarantee the tool tip is parallel to the hole being bored. Many thanks
I buy high speed square bank, mount it in toolpost weld a cutting edge to it. And it will be parallel to the axis
Do these also work on a taiwanese minilathe? 😉
You needed to tell people to make sure the surface is completely level/flat for which the lathe is being mounted to. You can make your already-chintzy communist china made lathe even more out of square/true when you tighten down the fasteners thats securing your lathe to the bench its on .... depending on what your bench is made with and how rigid it is. My brother's mounted his lathe to a home made bench he bought at a flea market. It was made with 3/8" think steel plate and angle that was warped by whoever aggressively welded it together. When he fastened it down to the bench, it tweaked the lathe being parallel from one end to the opposite end
Can i ask, whats the name of the song around 5:00? Thanks!
Grisly makes a really nice nice one. Way better tooling for 200 dollars more and has cone bearing like on a cars front end.
I agree with you on that one. From what I have seen the grizzly one seems to be the best of the bunch. It is just a shame that they weren't available for me to buy in Australia.
My question is... Can you upgrade the lathe motor to apply more power to the work while not compromising safety?
You can indeed, lots of people have, though at a point you need to look at increasing the rigidity of the carriage and slides in order to take heavier cuts too
Where are you based? I would def pay you for in person lessons, or even just to do the lathe work I need if you're interested and have capacity.
7:54 yes its like printer ink. you need it to print. you need this to spin lathe lol. even it sure cost pennies to buils. where i can find lathe without control board for 400 LOL. they not sell printers without ink too lol
Please, can anybody tell me, which is it maximum tool size for those chinese mini lathes with standard tool post? I would like to know if will fit 12 x 12 mm tool or 10 x 10 mm is maximum that can pass. I want to buy tool holder set with carbide inserts with size of 12 x 12mm and I do not know if will fit or those tools will be too much high of center.
The stock tool holder will work with tools up to 8mm high. Anything taller will be above the centre line. Cheers
@@artisanmakes Thank you!
i n t e r e s t i n g
its always a good idea but you should replace the Chinese in your lathe. not sure with what but do it.
Also my mini lathe had a shim on the apron for some reason... it made the gears tot move the slide have a ton of backlash and felt like shaking hands with a floppy fish. (if fish had hands)
But fish do have hands, it just they don't have fingers, so that why they are called Fins.
over the course of the yee.
If you want a good tip how about don't turn a piece of stock whose length is more than three times its diameter without a tailstock center. Kind of like in your thumbnail
When I was trained to use a lathe it is quite true that I was told about this rule, but I was also taught that this this guideline is just a guideline and changes depending on the material and depth of cut. Next to acrylic (which certainly requires a tailstock) the brass is the most common material that I turn and the brass I use here seems to be more forgiving at having more stick out than aluminum or steel, although this shot, and similar ones from the scriber video were certainly on the limit of what I was comfortable with at that depth of cut. If I was to take a guess at why that is I would guess it relates to the type of small chips that brass creates, compared to the stringy ones that you get from other materials. A live center would be the way to go but for what I needed the part was within the tolerances I set out.
On a side note for filming I generally try to push stick out to the limit when I can. I think it looks a little better to try and have the frame filled a little more with some extra material in the shot. And some shots need the extra stick out because the tool post or die holder would obscure the shot.
Overall a good thing to point out Dustin.
Cheers
My lathe is 79 years old and used daily . Made in US
congrats that you have been using it for 79 years.
@@spudnickuk No only 35 years !
Good stuff. I have minimal exp with lathes. My fav to use that i first found a love for lathes with was a 1974 craftsman atlas (least thats what was printed on the headstock). It had a 10 inch chuck and a large lays. Used it few times where i worked at the time experimenting and learning mainly.
Sure looks like you have used that lathe.
This isn’t theoatrix is it? 😂
Top Tips For Chinese Mini Lathes save a little bit more money and get a good lathe
Bigger lathes are usually better if you have the space and budget. I think these are a lot better than a lot of people give them credit for. Cheers
My big Tip. Don't use a Vacuum cleaner, Use a Brush and that way you get a better clean.
Bolting the mini lathe down will twist the bed.
You can level it if you need to, on a mini lathe there are a lot of things that need to be done before you need to worry about taking the twist out if the bed. Ultimately having a lathe that can freely move around quite dangerous. Cheera
@@artisanmakes Use only two bolts and don't tighten them down.
I put a clock in the 3 jaw and run it round a dead centre in the tailstock til it was true. I moved the tailstock to the end of the bed and loaded a centred piece of stock. Then I turned the exact same diameter at both ends and zeroed a clock on one end on centre height. If the bed is straight, the clock will read the same at both ends, if not, then shim the base of the lathe accordingly until it does. This won’t guarantee the lathe is level, but a lathe on a ship seldom is….but it will be straight.