The venerable BD920 is not crap, but it isn't heavy iron either. For the
price, you won't find anything better that can be easily moved or is
less than 40 years old. Just don't expect to take 1/4" cuts from
titanium bar stock ;-)

Check around for the best pricing as all of these lathes are made in the
same Chinese factories. For example, Enco was running a special with
free freight on their BD920 clone. It's gray instead of white, but it
beat the Jet price by hundreds of dollars.

Cliff wrote:
On 25 Sep 2005 22:49:48 GMT, D Murphy wrote:


szaki wrote in news:UtSdnZl8Z84fiqreRVn-
:


My company is looking for a small lathe for occasional turning of small
parts. I found this JET bench lathe for $1100-$1200, but I'm not sure
how good is the quality. I don't want to recomand something that turns
into crap later!

Don't worry. It won't turn into crap, it starts out that way from the
factory.

A little more info on what you're doing would be helpful. Material?
Diameter x lengths? Bar, forging, casting or headed parts? What kind of
tolerances? Quantities? Is it just turning? Or is there a lot of I.D. work
to be done?

You get what you pay for, there's no escaping that reality.


Crossposted to rec.crafts.metalworking

HTH