Importing a Chinese lathe

AndySomogyi

AndySomogyi

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I’m seriously considering importing one of these Sumore 300x700 lathes. I don’t have a lot of room and this is about the biggest lathe I have room for.

I’ve contacted a customs broker who can arrange all of the customs / port Issues and basically all I have to do is rent a truck and go pick it up at the warehouse when it arrives. The customs broker was surprisingly helpful and described the process as very straightforward and easy, plus they charge a very reasonable fee.

Anyways, including shipping and with a complete suite of accessories including DRO, nice stand, QCTP, tooling, coolant pump, etc, all comes to around $3000 USD.

that’s a good $1500 less than any US supplier of what I can tell is the same lathe.

I’ve been speaking with the manufacturer and they will provide all the inspection certificates, and looks like most tolerances are around 0.02mm.

Edit: checked to manufacturer, and lathes are built to customer spec. You can order a high precision one for an extra $100 USD that had 0.005 mm bearing, and 0.01mm ways. Hardened and ground ways and spindle.

comes with D1 camlock spindle.

The really great thing is I can get the lathe in ALL METRIC! I work exclusively in metric so imperial tools are a massive pain.

Any thoughts on this route?
 

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An ex friend of mine went down that route here, by the time he had jumped through all the hoops and paid all the thousands (slight exaggeration) of small hidden fees to shift the paper work between all the various and many offices he saved around $400 AU.
He imported two so as to sell one for profit, he tried to sell that one to me for the full retail price, I declined.
If your savings are really that much then well done.
 
Dhal22 said:
One broken part and where are you...................?
Click to expand...

My thought as well. Support for new machines is important.

I hope they have a full change gear set available for that lathe. They also don't say what kind of spindle mount it has, nor do they quote their spindle run out specs. All important stuff to me, Andy.
 
They said 0.01mm spindle runout, has a D1 cam lock spindle.

Does have a 2 year warranty, and I suppose after that, I can just call Precision Mathews and buy parts from them, I think this is exactly identical to PM's PM-1127VF-LB, or Sumore said the will continue to make parts available after warranty.

Good points though
 
Do you happen to know if the gears and spindle are hardened and ground?

Not trying to discourage you in the least, Andy. Mostly just curious about this machine because I've never heard of it before.
 
$3k is still a lot of money. Have you identified any older lathes that are metric and were imported here?

I wonder if the prices you've been quoted include the tariffs?

I kinda think if it were that easy we would have a bunch of members doing the same, will be watching to see what you decide.


John
 
mikey said:
Do you happen to know if the gears and spindle are hardened and ground?

Not trying to discourage you in the least, Andy. Mostly just curious about this machine because I've never heard of it before.
Click to expand...

I’m not sure about the gears, but I’m pretty sure the spindle is hardened and ground, at least every one I’ve see is, I can ask them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
When I purchased lathes and mills, other than the specs. the first thing I consider is service and parts. I have seen way too many of these import lathes where purchasers have been left with no support and no parts (like Bolton and Weiss in years past). Parts are often not interchangeable, even if machines appear to be similar and many distributors will only sell parts for their machines. You would be much better off with something like the Weiss WBL290Fwhich is sold by DRO Pros for close to the same price, comes with a 5 year warranty and you get some discount on the DRO or install your own for $200. I do about 30% of my work as metric, with a DRO you can read whatever numbers you prefer. Threading is a bit different, I personally would not go with either of these machines because the number of change gears on these models. There is the PM1228 which offers a bit more and the foot print is still pretty decent, 1236T is also nice but a bit bigger. If you want a metric version, I would contact DRO Pros, QMT or for that matter Weiss USA and see if they can import a metric version. At this price level, I do not see the value of trying to import a machine to save a few hundred dollars. I imported a major brand mill from Canada, it had a number of significant issues/defects, many of which never got fixed under "warranty". The few parts that I did get took many months, during which the mill was not usable. Others with the same mill, and also those with Sieg mills had the motor drive fail. The cost of the replacement board was over $1000, so a decent warranty and service is peace of mind even if you do not use it.

 
matthewsx said:
$3k is still a lot of money. Have you identified any older lathes that are metric and were imported here?

I wonder if the prices you've been quoted include the tariffs?

I kinda think if it were that easy we would have a bunch of members doing the same, will be watching to see what you decide.


John
Click to expand...

Yes, includes the !%*k1ng tariffs, that’s about $500 of the cost.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
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