How can they possibly make a useful tool for that price?
Well if you look at the size carefully they’re not alllllll that useful.
The first one the motor is almost bigger than the tool and it’s just a cheap ass motor you can pick up for $10 at Grainger. $3 on AliExpress or Banggood or whatever Chinese website handles motors. Those are for electronics and consumer junk mostly. Ha.
(I have an incredible amount of LED lighting stuff and microcontrollers and all the accessories and power supplies for them coming from AliExpress vendors. Other than having to wait until mid November for the literal slow boat from China, I can’t believe how much stuff I bought for $105 shipped. It’s unreal. Tariffs or not, electronic components and even good quality ones out of Shenzhen are just pennies. I hope I didn’t contribute too much to someone over there wanting to jump off a building... but what’cha gonna do? American fabs for this stuff are gone.)
The mini lathe is also more like micro sized. But there ARE some mini lathes that aren’t too awful for incredible prices now for the “home gamer”.
“This Old Tony” has done a couple of videos on YT on how he made one of the mini lathes better and maybe decent enough for light machine work for a home gamer. He didn’t exactly recommend them, but he still bought one and fiddled with it to make it “usable”. Kinda. If you’re careful.
I joke these days that there’s jobs I want a high quality tool for, and there’s other jobs I’m heading to Harbor Freight and the tool only has to last to the end of the weekend. LOL. If it lasts longer, great. Ha.
I really need to assess which jobs and tools I can realistically still operate with the bum hand, which makes me a little sad. I have a couple of projects that I’d love to do that I know it just isn’t worth the hand pain, and I have to be “that guy” who calls someone to do it and pays them. Sucks.
I had to have the garage door guy out for simple adjustments because the combo of ladder plus needing two fully operational hands just made it too risky for me to mess with them. Gah. Hate that.
Garage full of tools and many of them associated with tasks I can’t take the risk of doing now, mostly left handed. Ticks me off.
I do need a 3D printer though. Never took the time to research them but so many DIY projects now publish the files to just print the parts... it’s becoming a need for the home shop. You can use one of the online “I’ll print it for you” services but why? Prices keep falling.
I keep running into little things where I think if I just had the printer I’d slap out a drawing and just make the little part or enclosure or whatever. No half hour hunting for just the right size project box or whatever and then waiting for it, then having to modify it by drilling or cutting anyway... just print something that’s just right.
Home gamer CNC mills are becoming fairly commonplace too. Not quite as cheap as 3D printing but way down there from what it cost a decade ago.
