...and I shall call him.... "Mini Lathe"

[Greatscott]

I have been thinking about getting a mini lathe, but I know nothing about them. For the most part I want to make custom spools, to start with like the one shown below.

So, what's a good one, what's a bad one, what is a good price range for quality, but not features that I will not use?

Here is basically what I am wanting to do. The spool is 3D printed, and does ok, but is, without a doubt the weak point of this otherwise very strong winch.

Untitled by Scott O, on Flickr

Untitled by Scott O, on Flickr

[hpiguy]

What's your budget? When I was looking into this a couple of years back for a different hobby, decent mini setups by the time you included tools, tool holders, etc, was around $2k or more.

[DrIsotope]

I've been using a little 7x10 Central Machinery jobber from the Hazard Fraught for about 18 years now, and for the $349 I paid for it way back when, it's superb. Probably accurate to a thousandth on a good day. But I just checked now and it's now $759, and I dunno if I'd happily pay that today... but the randomly named off-brand stuff clouding the internet shops now (Mophorn? Techtongda?) have mixed reviews at the very best. So I'd wrap around to make a short story long and say: unless you're ready to plunk down ~$1,200+, the 7x10 or 7x12 Central Machinery guys are definitely "good enough." You won't be getting ten thousandths accuracy (at least not repeatably) but for one-offing small parts (old skool 3D printing, I call it) it's a solid machine.

There's also that persistent hope that HF will randomly put it on sale at some point , like they do with everything else.

[Mike Flea]

https://www.harborfreight.com/collec...the-93212.html

https://www.northerntool.com/shop/to...9822_200419822