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  • Several Regions have held meetups already, but others are being planned or are evaluating the interest. The Ontario GTA West area meetup is planned for Saturday April 26th at Greasemonkeys shop in Aylmer Ontario. If you are interested and haven’t signed up yet, click here! Arbutus has also explored interest in a Fraser Valley meetup but it seems members either missed his thread or had other plans. Let him know if you are interested in a meetup later in the year by posting here! Slowpoke is trying to pull together an Ottawa area meetup later this summer. No date has been selected yet, so let him know if you are interested here! We are not aware of any other meetups being planned this year. If you are interested in doing something in your area, let everyone know and make it happen! Meetups are a great way to make new machining friends and get hands on help in your area. Don’t be shy, sign up and come, or plan your own meetup!

NUMOBAMS 8x16 (NU-210G) Lathe Review

Okay, it is awesome now, I absolutely love it. Loud audible detent clicks, firm locating and a very solid feeling function. That's just testing without any lube either .

A couple pics of the bracket I turned. Detents are close to the original but the knob was correctly positioned so all three are being used and neutral is actually in the middle. I also altered the design a bit to include a bushing area for the shaft to hold it more rigidly.

Now I know it's going to be good.

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I'm about to post a "bigboy lathe" mod that I've done to this little thing, so I thought I would give a bit of a longer term update on it.

It's still functioning and it still makes parts.

I've had to redo some of the wiring as it looked kinda dodgy.

The motor controller board isn't as responsive as I would like and it seems to be getting worse as time goes. It's very susceptible to loading up without compensating which in turn drops my RPM. I usually catch it and turn the knob to compensate. I have plans to upgrade the controller board but would like something good. If anyone has experience with anything please let me know.

Everything I take apart reveals some serious shoddy work. From extra to misplaced drill holes, bad castings, poorly mating surfaces, junk hardware.

I'm starting to suspect the spindle bearings as they're making more noise and react quickly to center engagement. Preload has been adjusted, they're just not as stable as they were when new. I'm planning on replacing those as well with something better. Since there are sooooo many variations of this spindle and casting types, I need to take it apart first to see what's in there.

I guess the bottom line is this lathe is no better than the rest of the inexpensive 8x16's. If I was doing it again I would go super cheap and just put in the work to make it proper.

This is a great starting point for a decently useful lathe though. The size is spot on for my needs. Haven't had a swing or length issue yet. I do want something chunkier, heavier and older but I'd be fine with the same working capacity I think.

Anyways, keep an eye out for my mod post, I think you'll find it interesting.
 
This thread caught my eye because of today’s post. I went back to the beginning and had a look at your journey. The whole controversy / discussion over Chinese quality was interesting. Also I leaned a lot about why/how to level a lathe + droop, node, gravity, test bars of pipe or rod, etc, etc.
Thanks to all. :)
 
After owning a small 6 inch Sears Craftsman lathe, my first new lathe purchase was a Busy Bee Rong Fu 12x40 lathe, along the lines of a CX707 belt driven.. Paid 1200 in 1982 and I was thrilled. Then the reality came and shook hands. The tailstock was angled pointing down to make it line up to the head. When I removed the Tailstock I saw they had used an angle grinder to grind down the base to achieve a meeting of the centers. I spent the whole winter hand scraping the bottom of the tailstock and got it level, finally.
Now of course it was higher by 14 thou above the headstock centerline. So I removed the headstock fearing they had angle ground the base of the headstock. They hadn't. They had ground the lathe base instead, and really gouged it.
So I stripped the lathe down completely, and took it to a machine shop 40 miles away to have them plane the base of the headstock flat in the plane of the ways. The company refused to touch it, but I looked so desperate they said they would let me do it myself on their shaper. I said ok. Never used a shaper in my life.
I came back in the morning with a fist full of shims and feeler gauges, and set out to do this while shop life went on about me. It took me all 6 hours of work to line up the ram and the base and shim it all into line. Then I started cutting the casting. I had to remove 30 thou to get the divots out of it. Done.
I stripped it all out and lugged the bed into my car, cleaned up the site and walked out. Then a guy came hurrying out and told me they wanted to see me in the office right now. Oh, yeah, here comes the bill. They offered me a job as a lathe operator, and wanted me to start in the AM for $7hr. I said, I have to unpack the car, etc, let me start Monday.
So that was my first job as a machinist.
 
NUMOBAMS is a waste of time and money. Maybe someone can use the experience of "cooperation" with this brand. I ordered a milling attachment for a lathe in the official store on Aliexpress, and it's dead, no messages on the order of specific further from anyone, just a robot of the cainiao transport company called somehow (they "work" also qualitatively) - his provided information "take the parcel", I write to this wonderful transport company (which package, where?) , they answer - we don't know without the track number (it was unknown to me, since this wonderful transport company is listed on Aliexpress for absolutely my other orders). THE RESULT of effective cooperation between NUMOBAMS and its carrier: the goods were not delivered, went back; dispute on Aliexpress: they will refund the incomplete cost paid for the goods and the cost of non-delivery from me. NUMOBAMS is a lottery, and the quality of their products...
 
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