Hello everyone,

I recently placed an order for the 8" x 12" PRECISION MINI LATHE from Harbor Freight. Can anyone tell me if there has been revisions to this lathe? It seems some models are listed 44859-1VGA, then some 44859-4VGA...

Furthermore, what kind of tolerances can I hold (if I got good at it) with this lathe on small workpieces. More specifically, I wanted to create a small stainless steel rotor for a spindle. Do I need a 4-jaw chuck? Can anyone recommend a method to acheive the lowest possible runout with this machine?

Thanks very much!

Steve

Steve,

I don't know for sure, but my impression from the past is that the differing last four characters usually just relate to sales listed in different catalogs or on the internet. It used to be that you could sometimes search various different endings such as 0VGA and sometimes find the same item on sale at a reduced price.

Alan

Thanks for the info, wouldn't it be terrible to know you could have saved 100$ by knowing a certain part number?

I'm still a bit confused about the tolerances question. Basically, if someone owned a Harbor Freight 8X12" and had it in good working order and set up properly, knew what they were doing, then, what kind of tolerances could they hold on a relatively simple job? What are the limiting factors for precision?

For example, I know that any sort of parallelism misalignment will create a taper on the part. Apparently, you can shim up the ways or something to help minimize this. But, does anyone know how the runout can get in your way of producing a part accurately? If you machine the entire OD of the stock on the setup, isn't that now true to the rest of the features you machine into the stock? I suppose if you have to rechuck it, the runout of a three-jaw chuck would cause major problems. I can see why you'd need a 4-jaw chuck and a good dial indicator to set it up true.

Anything I am missing here???

Steve

on a good day i can hold a tolerance of 0.0005" on the diameter, depending on the length of the part(i have never worked on anything longer than 4"). there is slight taper, about 0.0001" per inch after i removed and cleaned the headstock and bed, and tightened everything down.

i also got a bison 3 jaw chuck from enco.com http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRIT?PMAKA=271-4072&PMPXNO=952288&PARTPG=INLMK32
defenatly improves on the stock chuck.

skmetal7,

Thank you for your specs, that's what I really wanted to know .

Steve