Upgrades to size or quality can only be done through buying another machine
For the overwhelming majority of purposes, I'd definitely agree about size (if we're talking work envelope; with one exception more of which later).
However, 'quality' (depending on what we mean by 'quality') can be improved, and notably so. Whether it's worth the investment in time, and sometimes money, is another thing.
What do I mean?
Well it seems, no matter the size,
Chinese machine tools tend to come with less than perfect QC out of the box.
From what I've read on here and other places, the 'larger' Chinese lathes from
reputable importers (benchtop lathes of 9x and up) seem to be a little rough and ready, but largely without fundamental in-built flaws.
Once you've disassembled, cleaned, deburred, adjusted and generally tidied these larger Chinese machines, there's not much more room for improvement in 'quality' terms.
On the other hand, the
mini-lathes (7x lathes), again from reputable importers, do have a lot of room for quality improvements (and yeah, that's hardly a glowing endorsement of these mini lathes
)
The notable lack of rigidity (I'd call it a quality issue, because it's the cost cutting that has led to the the bed being too narrow and the design of the ways and shear plate mechanism keeping the saddle from moving, being hard to adjust well and not really sufficient) can in part, be ameliorated by fettling the saddle, lapping the undersides of the ways, both on the rear and front ways and in between the ways and introducing an additional shear plate in between the ways.
The headstock deep race ball bearings can be replaced with tapered roller bearings or angular contact bearings.
The headstock base (where it makes contact with the bed) can be fettled to get better and more square contact with the bed. The same can be done with the tailstock.
The spindle flange can be trued up to improve contact with a chuck.
The sliding surfaces on the saddle, cross slide and top slide can all be lapped to improve contact with their opposite numbers.
Needle bearings can be added to the carriage, cross slide, top slide and tailstock to improve feel and reduce backlash.
The cross slide leadscrew nut can be modded or replaced to reduce backlash.
The cross slide can be modified to allow extended travel or an extended version bought.
All the knobs and handwheels themselves can be replaced with improved shop-made or bought versions.
The top slide can be swapped out for a T-slot equipped model (available from LMS and elsewhere).
And of course, finally there'll be the minor deburring and adjustment and tidying that you'd do to any of these Chinese machines.
Mill-equivalent-to-the-above-mentioned improvements could be done to one of the Chinese mini mills too.
Would all this potential headroom for improvements make buying a Chinese mini mill or mini lathe a fundamentally good idea?
Eh, unless one had specific budget or space constraints that forces one's hand, probably not. Buy bigger and better, I reckon.
That said, doing these kinds of machine upgrading, rebuilding and fettling tasks does teach you an awful lot about machine tools (and no, not
just that you ought to have spent more money
). So there can be a benefit there.
Of course the OP can, space-wise and financially, afford one of PM's Taiwanese mills, so none of this is particularly relevant to them, but these threads are here for anybody to read, now and in the future so, the information above
might be useful to someone at
some point.
