CO-Z 7"x14" Mini Metal Lathe with Nylon Gears | 550W Benchtop Metal Lathe with Accessories for Home and Shop DIY Woodworking and Milling

Great Customer Service - Mini Lathe is great with a little extra setup.

I didn’t have huge expectations for this. But…wow! It’s junk. It might cut wood or plastic, but when trying to cut metal it just blows the fuse - even with a very small cut. The seller is zero help. They approved the return but won’t cover return shipping, which is almost as much as the cost of the machine. Then they come back and say we *think* the control board is bad. We will give you a refund of $60 to get it fixed locally. Yeah, because $60 will surely cover that. What a joke.

I just got this lathe over the weekend so haven't been able to use it much, but from my usage so far I'm happy with it. At first, the cross slides were really difficult to move as others have mentioned. I (partially) disassembled cleaned the existing grease away thoroughly, then re-assembled. The screws & slides were still way too tight. So I started adding back little bits of grease & oil here and there and doing small adjustments. The parts were still too tight, so I contacted the seller. The seller was very responsive and wrote me back within hours and were going to replace parts as needed.However, with some further adjustments the slides started to become looser and smoother. It just takes a while to get them set right. You can't expect a tool this complex to be shipped and still be in perfect calibration. It has a few rough spots on a few pieces, but they can all be dealt with easily enough if they become an issue.Look, at this price point what you get here is a very solid value in my opinion, and I've been researching and shopping for lathes for weeks now. Maybe a machine that costs 20% or 50% more will come perfect in every way right out of the box, but I strongly doubt it.The bottom line I've found is that it's better to get a cheaper lathe/mill and spend some $ on tooling rather than spend all your $ on the machine and not have enough left for the proper tooling and attachments. After all, this is only the first step - you have a lot more bits, arbors, rests, holders, etc. to purchase after the lathe/mill itself.Happy chipping!

I will start off by saying that I wasn't expecting super high quality from a mini lathe at this price point. That being said I was still really disappointed that on my unit the compound rest slide screw was almost completely stuck. Yes the gib screws has been checked. Even with the whole slide removed I could barely get the screw out. When I finally did I discovered very shallow cut threads in the compound rest bottom. Rather than mess around with trying to repair it I ordered a new compound rest bottom from LMS. That one worked perfectly. Two stars since this was a pretty bad miss and clearly it had been forced on. Otherwise I am enjoying it. I'd recommend spending a little bit more on one with good reviews though.

Well its a lathe but it wasn't what I would have expected. Headstock, tailstock, carriage apron are made of aluminum not cast iron. The spindle diameter for the bearings is to small allowing for some play in the spindle so I'm using some blue Loctite to take out the play. Face plate is for 4 inch chucks and is out of true by a good amount but that's not the end of the world. The stock motor is useless at low rpms so I recommend replacing it with a sewing machine servo motor. Everything is out of true so expect to hand scrap and lap every surface and straighten everything out like the headstock, tailstock, carriage, drive belt and well everything. Before I bought a 7x10 harbor freight lathe and it had less problems. It has some good stuff on it I can use for the harbor freight lathe. But overall it works just not for making high precision parts like spindles.

Only issue i had with this lathe was a drive gear was improperly installed at the factory and the feed would not engage i messaged Banyan Imports Customer Service and was surprised that i got a quick response they are shipping me out a new gear as we speak. The fit and finish is actually very good i was very suprised this is a great hobby lathe if needed i would buy another on a side note shipping was very fast i had my lathe in 1 week apparently the import company has wearhouses in the US.