On Jun 21, 12:47 pm, mac davis wrote:


I must have abused that little thing on 300 turnings or more and never even
needed a belt replacement... the damn things just keeps humming along and is a
very good lathe..

That's my experience as well. It has been thoroughly used and
tortured (not intentionally!) by me and it is still solid. I turn on
a Jet mini more than my others.

As to vs/standard, I find that speed changes are not that often, and it just
takes a minute or so to change the belt position to change speeds..

Once again, I certainly agree. I like the fact that you don't lose
the torque when changing speeds. But something that is an added bonus
for me is that when it is time to change speeds it makes me stop
leaning over the lathe and stretch out a couple of minutes. I will
stand there working on that last little bit of something for much too
long without standing up straight and stretching out a bit.

My Nova 3K is variable speed, as is my Carbatec mini. I am used to
them, but I don't miss variable speed on the Jet mini, even though as
I said I use it the most. I have to say though, it was easier making
pens on the Carbatec VS when I was in that phase and making a lot of
them at once.

Something that I really like about the Jet mini is that you can easily adjust
belt tension, which I couldn't do on my larger Jet with VS.. YMWV

A bonus to that is when you are giving a demo or teaching. Something
I learned from a demonstrator was to tighten the belt only enough to
get good traction and leave it there. That way if there is a good
catch when turning, the belt will slip and minimize the trauma. It
works!

It's like a built in safety feature.

Robert