[fyffe555]

Some8,

I played with the machine for about an hour and so take what I say for what its worth!

Between centers is betwen the chuck and the tailstock, with the tailstock back as far as it would go. Swing is the max diameter of the part you can turn either by the physical limit of bed to chuck center height or the limit of what the machine is actualy capable of turning. Spindle bore is the diameter of the hole that goes through the center of the chuck and the headstock spindle. You can put rod or other material in the chuck and have the excess out the back.

The cutting size limits here are that this machine islight and by lathe standards not ridgid and so will move if you try to load it up with too deep a cut or too hard a material. That means either something will break or at best the finish will not be very good because the toolbit will chatter (move around or vibrate) during the cut. The machine has one speed, and as a part changes diameter the actual speed past the toolbit (cutter) changes with diameter. Since cutting speed is an important part of metal lathe work your finish would change and at worst you need to consider the part size based upon speed of cut and material. This would usually be smaller than the quoted max size. Material hardness plays into this too as does the depth of cut. You're not going to be making deep cuts with this machine, rather lots of small (shallow) cuts to get to where you need to be. Stainless at 2.5" would be a bit too much, unless you had some variable speed control and botled the machine down.

All I can say is that I was turning some Al at around 1" and it was ok. Definitely not up to even 7x10 mini lathe std for rigidity but it worked fine as long as you considered the light weight and build of the machine and for the money I wish I'd bought it. The macine I used had a four jaw chuck that was fine, four jaws need manually centering but its aeasy to do once you get the hang of it. No idea about the the jaw or any problems.

No idea about the milling machine, other than the website seems to show the same headstock used as a mill spindle - Something I've been thinking about using on a cnc mill. Like the lathe, the base and uprights are AL extrusions and the cutting capacities of the mill would be very limited. If you're doing very small stuff in soft materials then it should work ok. It's not going to be able to do 1.8" cuts in steel

Andrew