VEVOR 7"x14" Mini Metal Lathe

Fast shipment from the vendor & very professional! I would recommend this machine to any of my friends. It's a great bargain for its size class. The machine arrived undamaged. Everything appears to be working as it should. Tolerances and runouts are as advertised and will not require much, if any adjustment. It's just a nice little lathe! Machines packed for overseas transport are usually covered with clear cosmoline or something similar. This unit was no exception. Expect to get several shop towels saturated wiping off the bulk of it, then use WD-40 to dissolve and wipe off any of it that remains. It's also a good idea to check the gears for detritis like wood chips and styrofoam that popped off the inside of the crate due to stapling of the crate at the factory to prepare the machine for transport. The stiff, brown grease on the gears in the drive train is for lubrication. As long as it's clean, there's no need to remove it. I plan to keep it well lubricated and use Vactra way oil on the various gibs, dovetails, and Morse tapers. Regular oiling of the lead screws and bearings that have oil ports is best practice and the machine should last for many years if you take care of it. Swarf it down at the end of every work session and when you expect to leave it sitting idle for extended periods of time. One thing that's often overlooked by newcomers is shimming the lathe bed. If you want to maintain tighter tolerances and minimize errors, shim the legs of the lathe bed to remove any twists. The rubber feet supplied with the lathe are not helpful in this regard. Bolt the lathe feet to a heavy bench and add shims. YouTube has several good videos showing how to do this. As to the several comments about the motor not running, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!. There are several interlocks on this machine. The plastic cover over the lathe chuck has an interlock to ensure it is closed. The motor will not run if the cover is open. The Forward and Reverse switch on the front of the unit has to be set to the desired direction or the switch will trip out. And ALWAYS be sure to stop the machine when changing gears or directions. This thing isn't like a vehicle. Any time the gears or direction are changed, ensure the chuck is not turning! One other thing worth mentioning is that tachometer sensor under the end cover has to be close (but not touching) the left end of the lathe shaft. The small metal studs must clear the tachometer sensor. But if the sensor is too far away, the tachometer might register the rotational speed as something other than what it actually is. When I first turned on my machine, mine was reading about half the correct value. This is easy to fix by pushing the sensor a little closer to the shaft encoders, the small studs surrounding the end of the shaft. I have also seen a few people complaining about the lathe tools. These are brazed carbide cutters and need to be correctly sharpened before using. As with most brazed carbide cutters, it's up to the user to profile and sharpen them as needed before using them. You will likely also need to shim them in the tool holder to center them up to your workpiece. The lathe tool muti-tool holder will allow several cutter sizes. The ones in the included kit are 10mm x 10mm. If the cutter isn't lined up with with the vertical center of the workpiece, then watch some Youtube videos that explain how to do it. There is plenty of support for these machines on the Internet. If you have trouble finding videos, remember these all use similar parts that are made in the same factories in China. I agree that the multi-tool holder is a bit lacking and perhaps even more than a little clumsy. And depending on the metal you are working with, brazed carbide cutters might not be the best choice. They are typically used for cutting mild steel. Materials like high speed steel (HSS), titanium nitride, or cobalt steel cutter tools might be a better choice for other metals. It's just a budget tool holder with some general purpose tools for those who might not need anything better. There are lots of tool manufacturers with thousands of specialized tools available. Several recommendations are Shars Tool, Harvey Tools, and Tormach. There are several after-market quick change tool holders that will fit this machine with little or no modification. Remember, you are at liberty to add after-market parts and modify this machine as you desire. For small shop and hobbyist work, it's impossible to guess what every end user might need or expect. So watch videos, read books from the old timers, and ask questions. Someone will likely have a solution for whatever you may encounter. Also, remember that the larger the machine, the greater the cost for the tooling and work holding attachments. The cost of tooling and add-ons goes up exponentially with size of the machine. Many production shops that are trying to reduce turnaround time will expect more than the mini lathes and mini mills are capable of. If you expect the small machines to plow through the toughest metals with just a few passes, they just aren't capable of doing so. But most are capable of doing a decent job if you aren't in a hurry, take shallower cuts, use the right cutting tools, and don't have a long line of customers waiting. If you don't believe me, then look at what some of the so-called "model engineers" do with these things and even smaller machines of various brands. A good place to start is with the Home Shop Machinist books by Village Press, Inc if you are here in the US, and with lathe and mill books from Fox Chapel Books if you are in the UK or other countries. Amazon has both available.

Received in good condition, well packaged. All components were there, nothing missing. After cleaning the awful grease that covered everything and properly lubricated everything, I set in to make measurements and adjustments. The headstock runout was about 1thou, kind of expected for these cheap lathes. Ways were flat to about 1 thou after shimming and mounting to a heavy bench. The tail stock is absolute junk … it was 25 thou out of alignment. I could adjust the horizontal alignment, but the vertical was too high so nothing could be done to correct it other than machining the guide that sits on the ways. Unfortunately, the design is lame and the stock sits on an angle instead of sitting flat on the ways. To properly correct this, I’d need a 90deg chamfer bit for my mill but didn’t have one. I milled the opposite side to lower the stock so I could adjust it. I was able to align with the head stock to within 2-3thou. Total taper on a supported piece after turning it was still unacceptable. Getting a new tail stock. Yeah, I knew this would be a project, but didn’t expect the tailstock to be that bad. If you bought this and didn’t have a mill, this lathe would not be useable. I’m rating it 1 star so everyone is aware that if you buy this lathe you may not be able to get it in working order if you don’t have the tools and skills to fix it. There is truly NO quality control on this stuff so buyer beware.

Pros: Cheap Easy to use Strong enough to cut Titanium with different carbides than included The automatic feed works great Very durable and sturdy design Can run very fast Overall just a great machine that does as advertised Cons: Tailstock is a little weird, never is perfectly centered The tool post isn't height adjustable, I would recommend buying a different one to install The torque applied to the chuck is constant but the speed will vary by about 150 rmp when cutting hard metals vs just spinning without cutting. The included tools are trash. Buy your own, especially a boring bar and parting tool ^^^^^All these problems are fixable with about another $100 (with the exception of the speed variation) Takeaway: This lathe is worth your money, especially if you upgrade it. At such a low cost it has the power to cut very strong metals. Make sure to buy a different tool post and different carbides and your %100 set. Would strongly recommend it. I use this Lathe to make rings and wedding bands and it does the job!

Works as it should, for the price this is a solid piece of machinery. Everything seems to line up just fine and I had no problems setting it it up. My first project was a timing wheel and I was able to get a pretty decent surface finish with the provided cutters. The tool post is durable and works directly with 10mm cutting tools. I was able to use some 1/4" cutting tools but I had to make some 1/8" steel plate shims to get it to line up with the center axis. I only wish it had a spindle lock for tapping/dieing.

So far so good! This is a very preliminary review. This will be my first experience with the mini-lathe size machines, and I have just a few hours of hands-on experience learning some basics on a larger professional-grade lathe. At this point, I've only just unboxed, set up and inspected this "deluxe" version of the Vevor. For the very low price (less than half of many of the brand-names), I was expecting to get maybe mostly usable parts, but really more of a parts-kit than a machine usable out of the box. After initial inspection, not only does it appear that the parts are all good, but it also seems to be assembled and adjusted properly. the slides move easily but with no play in the dove-tail/gib areas. The gears (all-metal gear version of the Vevor) all mesh nicely and are well greased, motor is tightly mounted with good belt tension, and lead-screw turns easily with little play. The lathe powers up and speed control is smooth. Engaging the lead-screw drive train (moving the saddle by power-feed) does not seem to bog the motor down particularly. This lathe has a single speed range (direct belt from motor to spindle), but with a brushed motor rated at 550 watts (versus the 350 watt, geared dual-speed-range arrangement of most other budget models I considered.) I don't imagine this motor will produce as much torque as the more expensive brushless single-speed-range options, but hopefully it will be adequate. I think before I tear it down to clean and tweak, I'll try taking some soft-metal cuts to get a baseline on the factory adjusted state. At such a low price, I'm surprised that even seems like an option. Excited!!! I'll try to update within a few weeks.

Here is a Lathe, complete enough to machine materials like brass, plastic and with some patience steel. The accuracy and precision will require some additional effort from the buyer. The project aspect is disassembly for deburring many of the parts, to improve the mating surface finishes while learning new skills building confidence the machine will last as good fits make a big difference. Accessories you will need are a drill chuck, a 3/8 capacity is more than enough along with a live center, OAX tool post, & indexable 3/8 cutting bits. It's comes with brazed carbide bits but sharpening them is difficult if you don't have the skill. Delve into YouTube for techniques and ideas to improve the lathe first to have a good experience, do the work you will be glad you did. The chuck guard must be down to turn it on, so read the manual, it's quick but important. I recommend you keep this guard in place, not removing it. The lathe is all there, tools, ETC. A great learning experience tool. You get both machining with a lathe and learning how they work, the fit and flaws all in one. If a project is ideal, this is for you. If your looking to just get a Lathe to just machine with and go, not so much. I have mine dialed in very nicely now, but this took much work, yet fun to do and learned a lot, including my mistakes too. Included are pictures of the machine and my first project I completed on it. The end without the hole I left long, center drilled and used a center to support the material for machining that feature. Hack sawed off that little extra removing the center feature from that end, then took many light finish face cuts. Last operation the Sleeve used was to protect the surface during chucking to drill and turn the bore end. This is for show only. Cheers from a 90k Hrs. Job Shop Machinist.

Best deal/most advanced table top lathe I've seen in 20 years!!!!! This lathe has DIGITAL GEARS or, as more commonly known, an Electronic Lead Screw (ELS)-- It saved me probably 100 hours of work and $200 parts of converting the lathe to ELS! Makes threading a total breeze! Just dial in the thread pitch, and set the length! The computer handles the left and right motions and synchronizing start of thead with spindle on every pass. You move the cutter in and out when it beeps and advance the cross feed cut each pass and let it know when it can start! Once you have an ELS lathe, you will never go back! Oh, did I mention how wonderfully quiet this lathe is? Both the main (brushless direct drive) motor and (digital) lead motors are very strong and super quiet! There are two quiet timing belts, one for the digital position encoder, and one from the electric lead screw motor to the lead screw. Another result is that this lathe, has only 1/3 of moving parts of a conventional lathe. No high speed motors, no main belts, no clutches, no reduction gears, no motor tensioners, no gear direction changers, etc. Just the sliding carriage needs to be disassembled, cleaned, reassembled when you get it! My only word of caution is that the lathe has a minimum speed of about 55 rpm since it is direct drive with feedback speed control. It will "power through" most stalls at very slow speed after about 1/4 second when the feedback detects the underspeed! (A trade off I'm happy to make for the simplicity/low inertia of direct drive.) The large chuck, however, does add back quite a bit of inertia and a lot of stability! Mine had very little runout. --- I guess size matters! This lathe is also also extra large (1 full Meter (39") between centers, 220mm (8.7") Swing, 38mm (1.49") passthrough!) -- That, alone, makes this lathe the best deal on Amazon! Heck, I even really like the color! Light cream white with orange safety cover! Looks great and modern. (not the ugly gray or green or blue everything else is!) Easy read LCD-- RPM and lead screw position! Best value EVER!

Lathe has a lot of problems. From the on/off button and speed controller which doesn’t stay on. Not sure if this is trying to be a safety feature or if there is just something wrong with this lathe. It doesn’t stay on. Probably a bi product of this but because I can’t use both hands the lathe can’t hold dimensions. The dials spin themselves out of alignment from the general rattle of the machine. The machine is struggling to take light passes in aluminum. Because it can’t hold a dimension the finish is bad even working in nylon and plastic. The main material I bought it to work on though was aluminum to replace hubs on a scissor sharpening machine and in a dream world I was hoping to use it to modify the steel shafts to add a groove for a lock washer. Trying to make the hubs though on this machine feels like an impossible task I’m less than ¼ of an inch into the first of 8 of these I’d have to make and it took 6 hours. Any time I tried to take a deeper cut the motor stalled or the fuse would blow. I tried with a drill attachment for the tail stock to see if I would at least help me drill better holes and initially I was kinda hopeful the drill bit I had seemed to cut much better than the provided tooling but it takes a lot to center the tail stock any time I moved it either to hold the end of the work with the dead center or to set it up to drill was a tedious process of just trying to get centered again so for me it was mostly just a really convoluted way to start a hole on center that I had to then bring over to the drill press. It could in part be a biproduct of the provided tooling being bad. It could be that my expectations weren’t realistic although other reviews made it seem like aluminum would be fine. I’m not sure how it could be a “metal” lathe if it struggles this much in a relatively soft metal. It could be that the one that arrived to me has an issue with its switch or speed controller which is causing it to not stay on but nothing in the manual explains this. In its one session of use it tripped the GFCI it was on by itself and then tripped its own fuse several times while barely making any chips. It could be that if I invested in better tooling it would cut better I thought this lathe would be a tool I bought and invested in upgrading but while better tools might improve the situation the bones on the one i ended up with seem to have some major issues.