The joke being they need so much fixing up to be good that they’re useless except as a bucket of lathe-shaped cast iron bits that you can use to make a lathe. Machinist snobs still refer to these imports as “casting kits”. The more skilled you get, the more you can get out of a good machine (and the more you can still manage with a bad one). Buying higher quality up front will help you take longer to grow out of the machine, so spend as much as you can afford. That said, the average quality level of these machines is now good enough that if you’re just starting out, you’ll learn a lot and can do good work on any of them. Consider the Timeline for Outgrowing Your First Lathe Contact the resellers, research online, and know what you’re paying for. If an identical-seeming machine is priced $400 higher at Precision Mathews over Grizzly, it may be because they upgraded the bearings or include a higher quality chuck. Don’t make that mistake! These resellers often have a deal with the factory to build their machines differently (better bearings, different bed treatments, etc), and some resellers refine the machines themselves after import. It’s tempting to look at machines from Little Machine Shop, Harbor Freight, or Grizzly, see that they all look identical, assume therefore that they come from the same factory in China, and are thus equivalent in all but price.
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Sometimes you get technical support and an English manual in the bargain, sometimes you don’t. To complicate matters, there are a lot of local-to-you resellers who import these machines, fix them up (or not), repaint them (or not), and resell them. Navigating the World of Asian Import Toolsīuying an Asian import can be challenging, because there are a lot of choices. Let’s look at these two routes in more detail. If your interest is in learning how these tools work, and in doing a restoration project, an old American machine is a great choice. If you’re careful which one you select, you’ll end up with a very reasonably priced lathe that can do precise work right out of the crate. If you are new to machining, and want to learn the skills, I recommend starting with an Asian import machine. The answer boils down to what your needs are, and what you want to get out of this machine. The next big decision to make is “new or used?” If you’re in North America, this question has a lot of overlap with the classic question “Import or American?”.
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The last time we discussed machine tools, we talked about how to choose the size of the new metalworking lathe that your wallet is itching to pour itself into.
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