Jet Lathe

Can anyone tell me if Jet lathes are any good for the home workshop? I can get a 9x20 with the stand and all the tooling locally for $500.00 . It's 4 yrs old and in great shape. Thx....John

Reply to
John
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Sounds like a good deal. Jet is the best of the asian (worst) machines. Realize its a light duty unit and may have to be modified for best preformance.

Karl

Reply to
Karl Townsend

I bought a brand new JET shipped right from the dealer in a crate, and it was one pathetic piece of wanna be machinery to say the least......I did eventually get things worked out to make it right with JET, as the dealer got his $$$$$ and then failed to provide service and satisfaction. However if you can lay your eyeballs on it, and see it first hand new or used, thats not a bad price if its in decent shape by any means.

============================================== Put some color in your cheeks...garden naked! "The original frugal ponder" ~~~~ } ~~~~~~ } ~~~~~~~ }

Reply to
Roy

The larger import lathes are built pretty good for home lathes however the 9X20 seems to have been left behind. All of the imports need to be disasembeled upon arrival and cleaned and set back up right. They have heavy cosmoline in all areas plus often there is sand from the castings in there also. It does no good to just clean what you see as the bearings, inside the carriage, the head, quick change and all other mechanisms need to be taken apart , cleaned, relubed and reassembeled. If this is not performed you'll have no end of problems, bearings trying to seize up wearing gears out very quickly. Trust me, I know first hand. Since this is a second hand machine you just have to hope the previous owner did this. The 9X20's, although looking good are not built very good compared to the larger imports. they are noisy and sloppy and wear pretty quickly. They are O.K. for occasional, light duty use and if you have no other lathe it sure beats nothing, especially at that price. Dick

Reply to
Dick

That's a decent deal assuming that "all the tooling" includes the original steady rest, follow rest, faceplate, chuck, gears, etc.

The drawbacks to that lathe in addition to what others have mentioned are that it does not have a powered crossfeed, it only has a partial quickchange gearbox and it's lowest speed is too high for many things.

The same basic lathe is available from Enco, Grizzly, Harbor Freight, Wholesale Tool and probably a few others but you'll get good support from JET. When I picked mine up at a local auction it had a bad gear and JET sent me a manual for free so I could find the part number of the gear and then shipped the gear to me very quickly.

BTW, the manual is now available online.

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Best Regards, Keith Marshall snipped-for-privacy@progressivelogic.com

"I'm not grown up enough to be so old!"

Reply to
Keith Marshall

I would pass on a 9x20 - see Dick's comments... I have had a 12x36 for over 20 yrs, granted my use has been light duty, but for a home workshop it is the best for the money, by far... a used one will be hard to find.

HTH Otto

Reply to
ottomatic

Reply to
JR North

The older Jets made in Taiwan were good machines. I bought a 13x36 in 1986 and it has performed well.

Randy

Reply to
R. O'Brian

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