New Lathe at Lidl

Ketan will be shaking in his boots

VFD etc etc etc

LidlMyfordSuperOne

Edited By Ady1 on 01/12/2020 10:02:10

The idea of turning wood, of 25cm diameter, on THAT, is terrifying

MichaelG.

Should be OK for a bit of bowl turning, many moons ago we had one of those wood lathes that you clamped an AEG drill into which was not as substantial as that.

Hmm... a 500w motor with a speed controller for £60.

I can think of a few vintage lathe owners who could easily adapt such a motor for their own lathes.

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Did you mean bowel churning ?

MichaelG.

For a metal turner who doesn't want to get shavings on the oil all over his main lathe to make a small handle or bung for turninga tube it could be a reasonable thing to put in a corner and just use occasionally.
I'm wondering if the 500W 800-3000rpm self contained speed controlled motor is a viable unit in its own right for powering a small lathe like a ML1 or RandA. Has a convenient mounting rail to enable it to mount behind the lathe and move along to power a clockmaker's cutting frame etc.

My first lathe was one these:

(Image from lathes.co.uk)

Worked fine within its envelope. A bit noisy though. The Lidl one should be fine for small bowls, tool handles and candle sticks like I used to make.

Rod

I wonder what kind of motor is inside that ?

The description of the speed range as being "No load speed" & the price point makes me think it would be a pistol drill style brushed universal motor with a basic triac speed control.

Should that turn out to be the case, I'm not sure I'd want such a drive on a metal cutting lathe ?

Nigel B.

ps. Just watched a bit of a YT video showing one of these in use - sounds rather pistol drill-ish & slows down very noticably under load.

Edited By mgnbuk on 01/12/2020 11:00:14

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Which surely didn’t include turning [nearly] 10” diameter wood

MichaelG.

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 Here is Lidl’s claim:

• For processing wooden workpieces up to 60cm in length and 25cm in diameter

I wonder how they define “processing” 

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 01/12/2020 11:11:21

We've still got one somewhere.

As the only wood turning I do is for handles, and that is really rare, I just use the metal lathe

The Lidle lathe comes with a faceplate so I can't see why you couldn't make a shallow 10" bowl starting with a round bandsawn blank. The motor has a claimed 2/3 hp.

Rod

You had better bandsaw that blank round, otherwise it will be a flyer!

O.K. .... I give up

MichaelG.

Here's a YouTube video **LINK**

Doesn't look like the most pleasant wood turning experience but seems possible

Rod

I like the way he skipped the footage of getting it round. All looked a bit precarious for my liking. I'll stick to my Tyme Cub thank you.

Considering it was a badly balanced blank and the woods got some spalting it did not cut too badly, once he turned the speed up about 4.30 in there was less stalling.

Rod your old one looks solid compared to what I first used, this is not a good image but shows it was just a couple of brackets that screwed to the edge of a bench. Though not the thing to put a bit lump of natural edge green oak on.

I remember when those hand drill/lathes/saws/sanders ect were all over the place, you could even drill holes with it One of them, a Bridges make was claimed to drill 5/16" holes at 3500 rpm, it did, but the drill bits did not like it

I think the idea was to make "A drill for all seasons", but the bearings did not last too long.

A friend of mine might be interested in the Lidl one, when it gets here.

This YouTube shows a more likely use of the Lidl lathe - I have something a bit heavier for my woodturning but this machine might suit some craft hobbyists for smaller turned work. I think they are who this machine is probably aimed at.

Lidl Lathe turning Smaller Part

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 01/12/2020 14:38:15

Oh boy that was a scary video...