Actually, there are still lathe makers in the US that make high quality lathes - Hardinge, Haas, Levin to name a few. You can have a good American lathe if you can handle the cost. For the lathes you are referring to, it would be more accurate to say North American retailers.
Your picture shows the face of the spindle itself. This is the structure that chucks mount to and is an integral part of the lathe's spindle.
I wanted to clarify my skepticism about the spindle. I own an Emco Super 11CD lathe. It has an MT5 spindle taper, a 1-3/8" spindle bore and has zero run out. My spindle is hardened, ground and balanced, and it has a D1-4 camlock chuck mount. It runs in Class P6 precision tapered roller bearings. Just the spindle, all by itself, would retail for more than your entire lathe costs. So now we see a Chinese lathe with nearly identical specs at a price point that is difficult to believe. Naturally, I am very curious to see how they pulled this off.
With regard to chucks, as I said, you will need to mount chucks to a back plate because there are no quality chucks that will directly fit your spindle. Your first task will be to find a back plate that fits or learn to make your own. Then you can look at chucks.
The other thing to keep in mind is that as long as your 3 jaw chuck holds the work piece solidly, it will work as well as a high end Rohm or Bison chuck will for first operation work. It may not last as long and may not be as consistent but in terms of hobby shop function, it should be fine. If you're talking about a 4 jaw, the same thing applies. Since a 4 jaw independent chuck is adjustable, I doubt you will see a large functional difference between an economy chuck and a high end 4 jaw chuck in a hobby shop. None of these cheap Chinese chucks would last long in a production shop running thousands of parts over many years but for a hobby guy, yeah, they're fine.
Your picture shows the face of the spindle itself. This is the structure that chucks mount to and is an integral part of the lathe's spindle.
I wanted to clarify my skepticism about the spindle. I own an Emco Super 11CD lathe. It has an MT5 spindle taper, a 1-3/8" spindle bore and has zero run out. My spindle is hardened, ground and balanced, and it has a D1-4 camlock chuck mount. It runs in Class P6 precision tapered roller bearings. Just the spindle, all by itself, would retail for more than your entire lathe costs. So now we see a Chinese lathe with nearly identical specs at a price point that is difficult to believe. Naturally, I am very curious to see how they pulled this off.
With regard to chucks, as I said, you will need to mount chucks to a back plate because there are no quality chucks that will directly fit your spindle. Your first task will be to find a back plate that fits or learn to make your own. Then you can look at chucks.
The other thing to keep in mind is that as long as your 3 jaw chuck holds the work piece solidly, it will work as well as a high end Rohm or Bison chuck will for first operation work. It may not last as long and may not be as consistent but in terms of hobby shop function, it should be fine. If you're talking about a 4 jaw, the same thing applies. Since a 4 jaw independent chuck is adjustable, I doubt you will see a large functional difference between an economy chuck and a high end 4 jaw chuck in a hobby shop. None of these cheap Chinese chucks would last long in a production shop running thousands of parts over many years but for a hobby guy, yeah, they're fine.
