mini metal lathe?

Custom spacers, custom screws, custom lanyard thingies comes to mind. Can't be a bad tool to have!
 
Instead of starting with a tool and saying what will it do, how about deciding what you want to do and get the tool that will do it.
 
I have a mini lathe and a mini mill.

I use my mill far more for knifemaking then the lathe.

If you are making folders though the lathe will come in handy
 
Sometimes you discover what you CAN make after you get the tool ;)

I've made spacers/standoffs and bushings. Next time I'm bored I'll try some beads since they made a nice easy yet unique gift.
 
I have two lathes, used to make solid gold screws an stuff, but only thumb studs now. Too easy to buy pivots, screws and such.
 
I use my mini lathe to make
.060 washers for my shadow pattern slip joints.. Sadly that's it I am not a machinist for sure.
 
Or, you can turn quillons from damascus steel... Jason is also right on there about finials, that's a great use for a lathe in a knife shop. You can make one-off corbys too if you are in a bind.
 
I've always heard that mini-machines are good for things like aluminum but not steel .Any small but powerful ones for steel ?
 
The mini lathes and mills work fine for steel, if you make light cuts.
 
I am a former professional machinist/fabricator, and am quite satisfied with my mini mill and mini lathe for my needs. No, I wouldn't want to use them solely to make my living, but used for small subset of my living they work much better than the nothing I would have otherwise.

I'm limited on space and electrical availability, and until my fiance and I just bought our first house that we will be moving into on the first, we were moving from rental to rental, and full scale machines were absolutely not an option for me.

I found that the g0463 mill and 9x20 lathe were the smallest that would really work for me while still being able to be easily moved with an engine hoist and a pickup truck.

Although I would be hesitant to move to the smallest mini machines, many folks get plenty of good usable work done on them.

They do require experience, tinkering, finesse (for pros and amatuers ) and/or patience and learning (for those completely new to machining and both pros and amatuers) to get the best out of them.

Many things were mentioned above, but the sky's the limit... I even used my mini mill and lathe to build a professional quality 2x72 grinder. You can make knife parts but you can also fabricate and repair knifemaking equipment.
 
Oh, that's true- a lathe is great for general shop use, such as making or repairing your own grinder. I've made idlers, tracking, and contact wheels with the lathe... lately a 2" contact wheel that allowed me to deeply hollow grind a dagger blade. You can use them to make specialty bolts for equipment repair or fabrication. You can use them to thread pipe for burner fabrication work.

Also, I made some wa handles in micarta by chucking up the rough block in the 4 jaw chuck, and turning a tenon on the end to precisely fit a round mortise milled into the bolster stock. Works very well.
 
Pommels, thumbstuds, screws..... it goes on and on. Very handy. Polishing round stuff goes a lot faster :) Use it gunsmithing a good bit too.
 
True, you can use a drawbar and holder to hold a milling bit in the headstock, and then use a crosslide mounted vertical traveling vice to hold the piece to be milled and use the compound cross slide + vertical traveling vice for milling. Takes some specific tools to do milling on a lathe though. I've got a big metal lathe that I got this winter and I want to make myself a ball / radius cutting attachment for it so I can turn fittings and the like.
 
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