- Joined
- Sep 1, 2023
- Messages
- 462
From everything I've read (and so far experienced myself), all of this fit and finish (or rather, lack thereof) is the standard experience with the 'off-brand' Chinese lathes and to a lesser degree, with the branded ones too.
The branded Chinese lathes (Warco, Seig at ArcEuroTrade, etc. in the UK, for example; guess the same is true for Grizzly in the US) have at least some Western driven QC going on, so they tend to be better (Chinese factories are perfectly capable of producing decent quality output; they'll build whatever the importer asks them to and is willing to pay for).
Anyway, they all require some fettling/finishing at the customer's end.
One of the more notable problems this seems to cause is that beginners like me, can assume the cause of machining defects is all due to their utter lack of talent, or they can assume that these defects will largely disappear once they sort out their lathes' defects. Neither of which is generally true of course.
Both assumptions can lead to the beginner giving up in frustration. Either initially, or later, after they fix what they think was causing the issue with surface finish, or dimension hitting, or whatever, and find they still hit the same or similar problems.
Of course, the OP is taking a sensible route in sorting out their lathe's significant defects first. That's the only way they can then measure their progress in learning the techniques and feel necessary to do good (and in the case of the hobbyist, that often means 'good enough'
) work.