I’m thinking of taking the plunge and buying a small metal lathe.

I’ve been looking on eBay and I’m somewhat reluctant to commit to buying unseen and having to travel afar to collect. Thus I’m looking at new machines like this Warco WM-180

Does anyone out there have experience, good or bad, of machines (presumably Chinese) of this type?

I’ve got an axminster. Not a model they sell anymore, though. Very happy with it. If you are anywhere near them their showroom is amazing if you like tools.

Its not a patch on a ‘proper’ big lathe but It’ll make some nice bits.

My experience of small lathes, is it has to be said, generally bad.

Even the “good” ones, with well made parts, quality slides, and big motors just don’t seem to have “enough mass” to produce really high quality turned parts. My suspicion is that because the parts are a lot lighter than a full sized Lathe, the critical frequency of vibration is a in the same sort of frequency range as you want to cut at. This means that tool chatter etc is very difficult to avoid.

Having said that, by fitting some better quality head stock bearings, re-shimming / aligning the slides and toolposts, adding a much bigger 1phase motor with a nice heavy flywheel (to give some “inertia” behind the cut) i did make a reasonably lathe out of a cheapy Ebay one.

In the end though, for anything that mattered i used my work lathe or outsourced it, and just use the little “hobby” lathe for stupid jobs like parting off a bit of barstock square, or making a little nylon top hat bush to hold some non critical part or other etc

My teeny unimat is a) surprisingly good and b) still pretty rubbish. But since I’m also pretty rubbish, that’s OK.

Have to say being able to convert it to a milling machine is very handy- some of the mini options offer this too, Clarke frinstance.

I’d try and spend a bit more and buy an old myford ml7 or super 7. I paids £360 for a1949 ml7 with loads of extras including a vertical slide so I can even do a bit of milling. All spares and accessories are still available for it too.

I have a WM-180 that I bought a while ago for doing a specific job. OK it’s not a Colchester (but then neither is a modern Colchester!), it needed a strip down clean from out of the box, the electronics are a bit messy and you want to bolt it down onto something solid (I used a marble slab). You have to be diligent with keeping tooling sharp and at the higher end of the recomended rake (tangential tool holders are much easier in this regard) and keep cuts light, but it’s been reliable and is capable of clean and accurate work. Oh, and don’t forget to allow as much again for tooling.

My experience is the delivery times quoted by Warco can be optimistic if the item isn’t in stock.

Look at it like a Halford bike
Compared to a decent bike like er…you get my drift remember any my ford you buy will be like a classic car,absolutely you will put more into restoring it than using it

A boxford is a bit bigger will cost a bit more and isn’t too bad for the money if you can find an unabated one t b h it’s often easier and less risky to by China made