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What we can help you buy on 1688

Desktop and mini metal lathes

A lathe is the other half of a machine shop, and the desktop end of it is dominated by a handful of Chinese castings sold under dozens of names. The same CJ0618 bed appears with six different badges at four different prices.

So the question is never the brand. It is the casting, the spindle bore, the drive, and how much fettling it needs before it holds a dimension.

Request a quote for desktop and mini metal lathes

What we check before you pay

The bed is the machine

Mini lathes are cast iron of varying quality with varying stress relief. A bed that was not aged will move, and no adjustment recovers it. Ask for the casting weight — like crated weight on a router, it is the one number a seller cannot inflate for free.

Spindle bore decides what you can put through it

A 20mm bore and a 26mm bore are different machines for anyone turning bar stock. It is also rarely stated, and it is not something you can change later.

Brushed, brushless or three-phase

A brushed DC motor on a mini lathe loses torque badly at low RPM, which is exactly where you thread and part off. Brushless and VFD-driven three-phase hold torque down there. The motor type matters more than the wattage.

CNC conversion or CNC from the factory

A converted manual lathe and a purpose-built CNC lathe look similar in a listing and behave nothing alike — backlash, way cover, and whether the tailstock is usable under program control. Ask which it is, plainly.

What arrives needing work

Most machines in this class ship with preservative grease, loose gibs and a chuck that needs indicating in. Budget an afternoon before the first cut, and treat a seller who says otherwise as a seller who has not used one.

Guarding, and the chuck key

Bench lathes in this class arrive with minimal guarding and a chuck key that is not ejecting. In a workplace that is the first thing an inspector notes, and it is a real hazard rather than a formality.

Machine guarding — US OSHA 1910 Subpart O

How an order runs

  1. Describe the part, not the lathe Diameter, length, material and whether it goes through the spindle. Those four pick the class before any model is on the table.
  2. Class and honest limits We name the class and say what it will not do — threading in steel on a brushed mini lathe, for instance.
  3. Specification in writing Casting weight, spindle bore and nose, motor type and drive, centre height and between-centres, what tooling is included.
  4. Supplier check Which factory the casting comes from, and whether the badge on it means anything at all.
  5. Quote and approval Machine, tooling, chuck, tailstock accessories, crating, freight and duty, itemised.
  6. Crate and ship Dense and awkward. Priced on actual weight, so almost always sea freight, and the crate spec is agreed before it is packed.

What lathes actually cost

227 listings read on 2026-09-22, sorted into the three ways you can buy. The price bands below are computed over all of them; the items further down are a spread across each band so you can see the range rather than only the cheap end.

Wholesale · 1688

$971median · $448–$2,688 middle half

182 listings

Bought by the batch. Lowest unit price, and the seller expects a business buyer.

Retail · Taobao

$221median · $74.66–$456 middle half

43 listings

Single units, consumer packaging, and a price that already carries a retail margin.

Used · Xianyu: 2 listings — too few to quote a band from, so we do not. Nobody resells this category second-hand in any volume; that is the finding, not a gap in our data.

Ex-works prices in US dollars, converted at 6.697 CNY per USD on 2026-09-22. They exclude our fee, crating, freight and duty — the quote form prices those. We do not hold stock; these are live supplier listings and any one of them can go out of stock or change price between collections.

Tell us what you need in desktop and mini metal lathes

Links are reviewed by our sourcing team. We confirm specifications and pricing before you approve any purchase.

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