CXRCY 12" x 18" Wood Lathe, Benchtop Wood Lathe Machine 3/4 HP Infinitely Variable Speed 650-3800 RPM with Goggle for Woodworking, Woodturning

I wasn't sure this would be good quality but I've been pleasantly surprised. Since setting it up I've turned almost 1 bowl/day and occasionally as many as 3 in one day. I've often worked with very fragile beetle tracked and spalted oak and both extremely soft and very hard blanks. The lathe has been very capable and precise, allowing me to turn 1/4" to 1/8" walls laced with throughgoing beetle tracks. The lathe is heavy enough to be stable on a rolling work table for all but the most unbalanced blanks. The drive motor is quite strong, as are the tailstock and banjo. I've been very satisfied. After 4 months of heavy use the motor suddenly wouldn't turn on. Contacted the vendor through Amazon and they were immediate in responding and offering to send the repair part. Very easy to deal with and very responsive. Repairs are done and back to turning. Check out a few of the pieces I've turned with this lathe. After 1.5 years and over 100 bowls the lathe stopped turning, working with the vendor and they're again being wonderfully responsive.

Buyer beware. This thing is trash. I had it packaged up for 5 months, unpacked recently and ran it for 4 hrs over 2 days. It is underpowered, throttled down with any work. The motor failed and burned up after 4 hours. Customer service is non existent. After reaching out, no response, no follow up, no parts replacement options. Chinese made garbage. Do not buy this for your own sake. Recommend buying from and with a US based seller that at least has a semblance of customer support and parts options. It might cost you a little more, but its worth it. Look elsewhere. Strongly recommend Amazon look into this seller and/or delist them for poor product reliability.

There is nothing wrong with this mini lathe, it has power and does the job. However with most things that are cheap - some drawbacks have to be accepted. This does come with some very basic starter chisels to teach you how to sharpen and mess up before you go all out on the nicer sets you are going to buy. The motor controller is sufficient if you set up your belts and adjust the potentiometers for high and low on the board to fix the over spec speed. It does NOT have reverse, but that can be added with a 3 way 6 pole switch with plenty of room to mod in the controller case. That being said the huge heat sink is only contacting one mosfet and the rectifier is floating in air off to the side. If you were to be working the motor hard over time this will overheat and die. Be careful and go easy on the speed controller for long jobs. I threw away the ridiculous tool post and as others have noted looks like it will simply snap off. The tail stock only has 2" or so of travel which is about the right amount for lathes of this size. Most projects above a pen will need to reposition the tailstock for multiple passes. I have yet to figure out how I will remove the slop from the tailstock as it is clearly not cast for this bed. rocks from left to right 1/8" off center but does seat center if you pay attention. Lastly the metal quality here is sub par. The first set screw for the chuck on the headstock completely smashed and distorted the thread. Luckily I was able to chase it and reform it with simple hand tools... be gentle. All in all for the price and you have variable speed. Its still a good buy when compared against more expensive models. Just go easy, clean, edit, and replace junky parts and you'll be able to turn most appropriately sized projects with ease.

I have used this lathe for making large rolling pins, small chess pieces, pulleys, knobs and other random items. I maxed out with a giant 18" rolling pin blank which was almost 3.5" square out of jatoba, so it was super heavy and roughing it down made the motor work hard. I find the variable speed quite nice - I use it in the middle belt setting, which goes from 950 through 3000 RPM for me - I am going to try the highest belt setting and see how high the RPMs can go. I connected a Kill-a-Watt meter and observed when the motor was under heavy load of my carbide square roughing tool, it never measured above 300W power, 400VA....but it has a very slow refresh speed so it might not be the best judge of measuring motor horsepower. At the claimed 3/4 HP, this would be 746 * 0.75 = 560 Ws, but I have never observed that high. The spur center, live tailstock center and center plate are black steel, not pretty and shiny like Nova gear, but they get the job done. All standard measurements on this lathe - the threads on the headstock are the most common size, I forget the exact spec and the tapers in the headstock and tailstock are common MT2 - I was able to find a center screw and a higher quality live tailstock center as well as a Jacobs chuck very easily - I read somewhere that non-standard gear costs an arm and a leg so I was careful to select a lathe with very standard fittings. This lathe is identical to the one Grizzly sells for a lot more money and its well made and very heavy, I've not needed to bolt it down yet, but then I haven't tried turning big bowls on it yet, only spindle work till date.

What a piece of junk! It vibrated pretty bad so I tightened all the nuts and bolts, which helped a bit. Used it for about two weeks just to get used to it. I went down to shop to finish apiece Iowa's working on and it wouldn't even turn on. So went through all the wiring connections with my VOM and everything checked out, except the motor still would not run. I have had the unit for a total of 5 weeks, one week too much so neither Amazon or th manufacture will warranty it. I tried to find a replacement motor but no luck there. It will make a good anchor for somebody.

Nice product for a first lathe. It is my first lathe and it works really well for what i use it for. With the addition of a 4 jaw chuck and a circular center steady rest I was able to taper down a 36 inch dowel rod for a walking cane. Also turned my very first bowl. I am very pleased with this lathe.

I love the Lathe. I have made 30 or 40 wood bowls. Yesterday, I turned it off and now it won't start. The speed indicator works but it start or run at all. Can anyone give me any ideas, is there a reset switch?

Lathe was dirty and appeared to be used