7 x14 Chinese mini lathe

S

Sky_king221

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Howdy all, new member here.. A few years ago I saw a video on YouTube by This Old Tony about the infamous Chinese mini lathe. It was the size that I needed. I begged the wife and she finally caved in and I became the proud owner of the most reviled mini lathe on the planet. It took about a month to arrive. It was not bolted down in the shipping crate, both of the hand wheels came pre-cracked, the power cord strain relief was broken, and the chip shield was dented. But, it came alive and worked when plugged in and turned on. I was able to fix the power cord, and used the hand wheels as they were. After about 6 months, the spindle drive belt broke, and finding a replacement took a good 3 months from a supplier in California. Everything worked perfectly for the next year until I decided to replace the cracked hand wheels. While parting off, the blade jammed in the part and the chuck abruptly stopped. Before I could get to the stop switch, a small puff of smoke said I was going to have a bigger problems. Ya know, it's real hard to find parts for a lathe with no parts manual available. I was about to buy a replacement lathe but called Little Machine Shop first to see if thier tech people could be of help, and they were. They directed me to thier resources page and there I found a man who repair Chinese mini lathe controller boards. Unfortunately it turned out the board I had was not repairable, but he had a board that would work. I bought it right out and inside of 2 weeks was up and running again. I have since completed the new hand wheels shortly. After that I upgraded the control box to move the controls around and incorporate a digital rpm readout. I am currently working on a carrage lock and cutting oil dispenser system. Jim
 
Hi there and welcome to the forum.
Good job keeping your lathe in operation. Half the fun of being a machinist is keeping your machines running!
 
BTW folks, while searching the internet for parts for my lathe I did find that it a very, very close relative to the Seig C3 mini lathe. You can also find parts and information as a CJ0618 lathe. Jim
 
Welcome to the forum!

My experience with LMS has always been great, my only complaint being that they were so far away from me that delivery took a long time: you won't have that issue.

You can make a lot of good parts on those little lathes; glad you're back in business
 
Welcome. Your first mission, should you choose to accept it, is to post up a picture of this little lathe you have. This message will never self destruct and in fact, will probably outlive all of us.
 
Be careful, these mini lathe arrangements often lead to larger lathe purchases down the road. Don't ask how I know. ;)

One of the better mods I did to my mini lathe before getting rid of it was to change the headstock bearings over to tapered roller automotive wheel bearings. It improves the rigidity quite a bit. That and refitting and tuning up/aligning the headstock/carriage/tailstock properly. Thiese things are really lathe "kits", some assembly required.
 
Yes, the often maligned and disparaged mini-lathe can be a rather good tool. I would be the last to laugh at one, especially if it has had all the commonly-known upgrades applied to it. I will admit to cheating when mine was bought. I got one of the "deluxe" LMS models that came from the store with the maximum upgrades (except carriage lock, extended cross-slide, tapered bearings, and 4-jaw chuck). All the other common upgrades came with that mini-lathe (metal hand-wheels, lever-release tail-stock, Digital Read Out, Quick-Change tool post, 16 inch bed). It cost more, but arrived ready to hit the ground machining.
 
The wife gave me a 4 jaw chuck, ER32 collet chuck, and new control box enclosure for Christmas. All have been incorporated. I have the new taper bearing, just waiting for the right time to install them. Jim
 
Welcome aboard Jim, it looks like you're getting to know the limitations of your mini lathe, not an easy task , carriage lock and extended-travel upgrades are most useful , I will always keep my mini lathe even if I buy a bigger lathe.
 
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