your opinions on harbor freight lathe tooling/accessories

[sunnyday]

Im gonna buy the HF 8x12 lathe and was curious if HF had most of the neccessary tooling and accessories I would need for that lathe to cut, turn , thread and drill round metal stock ?

What accessories would I need for this and does harbor freight seem to have decent enough quality on such items . Id imagine their prices are the lowest on such items . Does harbor freight even offer things like quick change tool carriages ?

[Twmaster]

Other than the little 1/4" square indexable bit set H-F sells the rest is mostly garbage. That includes drill bits, taps/dies too.

www.littlemachineshop.com is a good source as is feebay.

[tumutbound]

Another good place to buy tools is CDCO.
QCTP on special at the moment.

[blades]

Originally Posted by Twmaster Other than the little 1/4" square indexable bit set H-F sells the rest is mostly garbage. That includes drill bits, taps/dies too. www.littlemachineshop.com is a good source as is feebay.

+1
I pretty much agree with Twmaster here. I bought a package of 2 end mills that were totally junk, however they were good enough to machine nylon and a bit of aluminum. When I had my X2 mill, I did buy collets from an ebay store, but I'll be damned if I can remember the name. Discount Tool or something like that.... they were ultra-cheap on their collets, as well as most everything else they sold. HF is simply not serious about selling tooling to support the machines they sell.

[sunnyday]

HF seels a quick change tool post with 5 tool carriers and knurling tool, chuck ,etc for

ITEM 42806-0VGA

$89.99

anyone own this ?

is it total junk, or is it something that would work fine for hobbyists ? Its not stocked in the stores and can only be ordered special.

[jduke]

where do you get extra tool holders if you buy the HF QCTP

[jazz]

Originally Posted by tumutbound Another good place to buy tools is CDCO. QCTP on special at the moment.

I too am looking for tools for a hf 8x12.
I checked with CDCO about their QCTP and was told that it is too big for the 8x12. Any suggestions as to which QCTP will work with the 8x12?

Jazz

[Vin007]

HF, sales tools that are one hit wonders. You use them once and you wonder why you bought them. But seriously, if you going to do anything that involves serious machine work, don't buy your tools for your lathe or mill at, HF. Enco is better than buying there. I bite the bullet and steal the resharpened tools from work nobody else uses. : ) And the QC post that comes with the lathe is okay if you do a little work on it. Tools from MSC and Grainger are expensive but payoff in the long run if you do a lot of at home jobs.

[ibuildstuff4u]

I agree with what your saying about the quality with HF, but one thing to point out is most of the import tooling at Enco is the same cheap stuff that HF sells, they are just asking a few bucks more for it. If you look in their flyers they are very truthful about where there items come from and have the cheap import stuff labeled as such.

There are many options for QCTP for the 8 X 12 and I'm sure a ton of info will come up if you do a search on this site for it. One option is to buy one from Lathe Master because they have special cut down tool holders to work with the 8 X 12 lathe. The down side is you have to have all of your future tool holders cut down too. Another option is to buy a cut down cross slide from Little Machine Shop.com and then any AXA or size 100 tool post will work on your machine. I bought my QCTP off E-bay from one of the many tool sellers and got it for a pretty good price. Most of these sellers also have extra tool holders in stock so you can save on shipping costs and buy them all together.

The only problem I have seen with the 8 X 12 lathe is the way you have to change the chuck. The back plate stays with the spindle and you have to buy the right chuck to fit or make a custom back plate for other chucks to fit. So if you want a four jaw chuck you may want to look into purchasing it from HF unless you want to make a custom plate to make a different one fit.

Dale P.

[Twmaster]

Yea, Enco is just like H-F on a lot of their stuff. I'd go with the cut down parts from LMS and a good AXA type tool post. It will save a lot of grief methinks.

I've bought a fair share of import items for my machines. I don't expect too much and I'm rarely impressed. Discount Tool is a decent seller on FeeBay. I've also bought a good share of used American tools and tooling off FeeBay. Most of that stuff I have been impressed with.

[sunnyday]

So no one has purchased the HF..dovetail QCTP with 5 tool holders and chuck for $89.99 ?

I may be a guine pig and buy it...Id imagine it is a direct fit for the 812 lathe and doesnt need to be drilled out or modifyed. With a 20% off coupon, the total price will be around $75 for everyhting...it is on their webiste under LATHES,,,

it says it is a dovetail style, which aI assume means a wedge type holder..and not piston type.

I will call harbor freight tommorra and see if customer service or tech dept can tell me if the QCTP is a direct drop in replacement for the stk holder.

I agree with the fact that much of these accesories, are coming from china and just have different names on them, higher prices and are being sold by many differnet vendors.

[ibuildstuff4u]

Just an FYI. I took a quick look at the HF web site and didn't see anything that said it will be a direct fit to the 8 x 12 lathe. It could be for the 7 x 10 or one of their larger lathes? Perhaps I didn't see something in the description? It may fit just fine.

The only reason the AXA size doesn't fit is because it places some of the tools too high to the work and ether the tool holder or the compound rest needs to be cut down a little. If you have a mill you can cut down the original compound too instead of buying a new one. I trimmed a little off mine to make 1/2" tools work.

I have the 9 x 20 lathe, but a friend of mine has the 8 x 12 and I helped him with his QCTP. He went with the cut down compound rest from Little Machine Shop. com and it worked out really good. $75.00 isn't bad for the HF tool post, but I don't think they offer any extra tool holders so you may want to look into that before ordering. I got my tool post for under $100.00 shipped and $12.00 for each extra tool holder. It is a piston style type made by Shars and I have been really happy with it. The HF tool post looks like a piston style too and not a wedge, all of the tool holders have a dove tail design it's just the way the tool post tightens them up.

Hope that helps!

Dale P.