Goodness me Bartapuss, you do sound angry about something.
Just to let you into a little secret, the mini lathes that are made nowadays are a great little lathe, and with a small amount of patience and understanding, can be made to work wonders.
I only 'repaired' one the other week. 'What a load of ****' was what the owner said, 'everything flopping about all over the place, and I can't get a decent finish'. So I told him to leave his lathe in my shop, and trek back to darkest Oldham. I would give him a call when it is ready to pick up.
About three hours later, the machine was transformed. First off was give it a good drink of slideway oil, then a bit of shimming to get rid of the backlash on both handles, gibs cleaned out and again given a dose of oil. Then all I did was adjust everything to correct specs. It is now back at home, and he hasn't stopped using it since. He can't believe it is the same machine. I measued up the bed, and there wasn't more than 1 thou over the whole length, and that small error could have been caused by oil film (0.002" average thickness).
The trouble is that people buy these small lathes expecting them to be ready to go straight out of the box. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You get a box of bits, it is up to the purchaser to get it adjusted correctly to use. That is why they are so cheap. If the retailer were to spend time setting up every one that came in from China, they would cost at least £200 more in labour charges alone. So what you are buying is an unopened box, straight from the assembly line.
Earlier ones of these lathes had a few major problems with the casting and subsequent maching, but even those can be brought back from the dead. This owner had assigned it to roughing out work, but now treats it as though it is a watchmakers lathe, because it gives the same sort of results. The saga can be found here, and it does show how badly these lathes used to be made.
http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=627.0With regards to DRO's on lathes. If a lathe or mill is adjusted and lubricated correctly, a DRO will definitely improve your machine tolerances, even on a mini mill or lathe.
I have recently bought new machinery, and have converted both the mill and lathe to have four axis DRO on each one. OK they are not cheap little machines like the mini lathe and mill, but ALL machines, if set up correctly in the first place, will benefit from some sort of DRO setup.
By fitting extra DRO's to my lathe, and adjusting it all in, I have converted it from a general purpose workshop machine, to a highly accurate piece of tooling that will bang out piece after piece, all within 0.0005" (approx 0.01mm) tolerance. Plus if I need to, no tolerance at all.
The picture is of my lathe readouts. I don't look at the feed handles any more, once the initial cleanup cut is done and a measurement is taken, all settings are done to DRO readouts until the finish of the cut.
Bogs
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Topic: Digital read out's for mini lathe (Read 14057 times)