I got an RC-210E

Let me preface this by saying I’m not a lathe guy, I’m a mill guy.

I’ve been using the same micromark branded sieg c3 for more than half my life to pretty good effect because I’m usually only making smaller shafts and specialized fasteners under a half inch, but lately my needs have grown to include motorsports axles and super charger rotors which won’t fit on a 7x14 lathe.

I originally wanted to get a precision matthews pm-1236t, but since the time I’ve been considering it to now the price has risen 3000usd from it’s original 4000usd price to 7000usd and I can’t justify it anymore because of how infrequently I actually use a lathe.

I ended up getting one of the super-extended sieg c4’s, an 8.5x31.5 with an electronic lead screw. I’m mostly making this post because I don’t see anyone else on the internet reviewing/testing it.

I’ll post more thoughts/tests in the future but so far:

Pros:

  • Came very well crated with no damage
  • Only weighs ~150lbs which means I can move it by myself
  • Initial inspection of all ways indicate good grind and minimal dings
  • Has oil ports
  • Has electronic lead screw (no more changing out gears!)

Cons:

  • The MT5 spindle bore is not deep enough to hold the MT5 test bar I bought
  • Very very slight surface rust in spindle taper
  • Only weighs 150lbs, the “real” lathe guys will say a lathe this size needs to be atleast 800lbs
  • All the leadscrews are metric
  • Spindle motor shaft keyway is undersized for the key (key falls out)
  • No power leadscrew dust cover

In the future I’m definitely going to get a quick change toolpost, I’m leaning toward the Indian QCTPs instead of the Chinese QCTPs. I’ll also look to remove the metric leadscrews and dials and replace them with Inch to improve usability… the rack on this thing is graduated into 90 0.25mm ticks per revolution… who thinks that way?

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I finally got around to getting the test bar fitted, the “surface rust” in the spindle taper was deeper and more stubborn than I thought it would be which slowed me down.

I’m satisfied I have the test bar fully seated in the taper.
3.1" from the Spindle flange I’m getting 2 tenths of runout which is outstanding, moving out 14.7" from the spindle flange there is 4.5 tenths of runout which is very good, the bearings have proper preload for there current un-ran-in state.

Next I tested the bed straightness and this is where I’ve got some problems. I tested at one inch increments to rule out head nod/misalignment if the measurements don’t grow linearly. At 14.1" from the spindle flange I’m getting a 13 ten thousands of an inch droop and 55 tenths movement toward the operator.
I’m hoping this is bed twist and I can address it by bolting the lathe down to a plate and shimming appropriately. I could probably glean more information about the twist if I retry the test with the cross slide in a different position.

I also check the bed hardness with my new tsubosans; I’m getting right between 45 and 50 HRC.

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Hi There,

I too am intigrued by this lathe. The servo/stepper driven leadscrew would seem to solve the conundrum of change gears or (very) limited gearbox options (still with change gears). The rest of the machine seems to be a stretched and raised version of the ubiquitous 7x14 mini lathe.

Have you had a chance to test the electronic leadscrew yet?..And???

Thanks - Malcolm in Canada

Hey!

Exactly, changing out the little gears on the sieg c3 lathes was a pain… Although tbh with this lathe, going through menus to select a pitch is semi-annoying to me as well, but I suppose it can’t be helped with all the different modes they programmed in. One of the more useful modes is a thread stop mode where it’ll automatically stop after it threads in a certain distance that you can specify (no more quick drawing on the crossfeed lever).

The stepper motor that drives the electronic leadscrew on the lathe is fairly powerful, it can do some relatively (for the size of the lathe) deep cuts without stalling out, its a nema 23 with a fairly substantial gear reduction.

So far to me the weakest part of lathe is the way they did the bearings (or lack thereof) on the crossfeed and compound slides; its effectively just a flange in the hard feed screw pushing up against mystery metal (some kind of zinc alloy I think?) retainers.
I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of trying to improve upon the design by adding in dedicated bearing bronze thrust washers and preloaded thrust ball bearings to make the feedscrews more consistent.

Well, I took the plunge and ordered one off Amazon yesterday…You may scoff, but in the USA you guys can buy these same lathes from Walmart…I kid you not, Free delivery to the store for user pickup… I’m in Canada, so no luxuries like that. i sold off a really tight Boxford AUD lathe due to a pending move and necessary downsize. One if the hedonistic aspect of this machine was the ability to choose from 4 to 224tpi, or 1.5 thou up to 85thou feed rates right there on the QC gearbox… I’m sure the loss of heft (the Boxford weighed 4 times as much as the incoming 8x24 ELS lathe) will be a factor at some point. DO you know if the headstock gears are metal or plastic - it is after all a fully tricked out, stretched and raised 7x12 mini lathe…

I feel your pain, that is a nice lathe; about the only non-regression on the chinese lathe is the bigger thru-bore.

There actually are no headstock gears like the little 7x14 lathes had, its all belts:

I wrote a first impressions vendor response for Amazon (where I bought it), Here it is:

Intbuying electronic leadscrew lathe

The reason I opted for this lathe over the hundreds of similarly 7x14 derived Asian lathes was the electronic leadscrew approach. I had just sold a nice Boxford lathe with a quick-change gearbox and needed to replace it with something smaller and more portable due to a pending move/downsizing – but I didn’t want to go back to the tedium of mixing and matching change gears for different feeds rates and thread forms, so the electronic leadscrew approach ticked this particular box.

First impressions.

It arrived quickly and was well packed in a wooden crate with lots of Styrofoam packing. The lathe itself was enclosed in a plastic wrap. There was no damage and all the parts as far as I could tell were present and accounted for. (I say as far as I could tell because they sent the wrong user manual with this lathe.) It’s a handsome looking lathe both with its colour scheme and curved front panel. The handwheel crank handles let the overall look down, being simple un-plated and discolored steel. Still functional, but disappointing. The full-length rear chip guard and chip tray or a nice.

As received, it is sparse on accessories - a 5” 3 jaw chuck (Sanou) with inside/outside jaws, 4 way tool post, a dead center and some misc. tools. If you want more to make it more flexible (E.g.; backplate, 4 jaw independent chuck, quick change tool post…etc), you’ll need to order these separately.

The spindle taper is MT5 due to the 1.5” bore, so the first thing you’ll need to get is an adapter to go from MT5 down to MT3 or MT2 depending on what your other accessories require. The tailstock spindle is MT2.

Other than the electronic leadscrew, it’s basically a lifted and stretched Asia 7x ‘whatever ‘class lathe with a 1.5” spindle bore. Taking the access panel off the end that would normally expose the change gears displays and array of cogged belts/pulleys and sensors instead of a geartrain. Everything looks robust.

First power.

In the absence of a manual (which I requested, and they sent a couple of hours later) I was left to divine the inner workings of the programming panel. Some things are intuitive – other things obscure, but I was able to get the lathe powered up, turning and feeding.

This is probably the quietest lathe I have ever owned. There is none of the usual constant whir/clatter of a gear train – just a quiet hum, no matter what speed.

You can quickly program in feeds rates (0.1-0.44mm per rev – it’s a metric lathe BTW), metric or imperial threads. Because the leadscrew is driven by its own servo which is tied in with the spindle rev sensor, an almost limitless number of thread pitches are possible. I have yet to try actual cutting….

The programmer seems to have a lot more tantalizing capability built in, but even the sparse programming manual I finally received didn’t really clarify things that much – just a list of buttons and functions, not what they actually do or an explanation of what they’re good for…

The final word

It’s early days in terms of the lathe’s overall capability or reliability, but so far, I am pleased with the purchase and the response to date.

I know the owner pool is not that big yet, but has anyone out there figure out what the degree function is, and what it can do? I know that it’s reading the angular position of the spindle, but the programmer won’t let me increment or decrement the degree setting.

Even if I could, what does it do…? I’m hoping that it is an electronic indexing function. Wouldn’t that be cool.

The supplier here in Canada has replied that the degree function is only a read-out of the spindles position. The only input it will accept is zeroing the readout. So you could still use it as a manual indexing tool although it is very, very sensitive, and there is no way of locking the spindle once you achieve desired rotation.

Also, have to say I was highly amused by the inclusion of a change gear chart on the end cover. I peeled mine off. Unfortunately, it pulled about a 1" square piece of paint off with it…

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That is good to know. Makes the idea of building some kind of friction based spindle lock more appealing.

Mine has the same sticker, they obviously reused the cover from the wm210 lathe on this one.

Do your cross slide and compound feel alittle crunchy when you move them? Mine had some grit in them from the factory that I discovered when tearing the machine down.

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I was able to snag a brand new, runout-adjustable 6 jaw chuck for mine for half price on fleabay. Normally I wouldn’t consider getting a chuck that costs almost half the price of the machine… but for a quarter of the price I could stomach it.


It seems like Shars is trying to empty it’s inventory of these chucks cheaply/quickly.

My cross and compound slides seemed to have a high point that would rub every revolution. So I took of the hand wheels with the dials still on and gently sanded the face with some 320 grit wet/dry on a surface plate and they work a lot better now. The carriage traverse is a little notchy in places but I can live with it for now.

I think my biggest adaptation on this lathe will be to come to terms with metric instead of Imperial. All my lathes up till now have been imperial so I’m used to thou’s, not 10ths of mm’s…

The auto function return on turning and threading is a nice touch, and I really like the one-touch (Dir button) leadscrew reverse.

The degree function is pretty useless. Who knows, maybe they will offer a firmware upgrade that will turn this in to an electronic indexing device. I sure they could devise some way of advancing the spindle by an input number of degrees and then electromagnetically ‘locking’ the spindle…

Other gripes - the carriage traverse handwheel is too close to the cross-slide handwheel. Already skinned my knuckles a couple of times. But this is after all, as its base, a 7x14 mini lathe…

Overall I am happy and intrigued by this lathe. I have not yet undertaken a ‘project’ on it - still getting comfortable with it…time will tell.

If anyone is looking for accessories for this lathe, here’s a couple of links from my Canadian supplier. Don’t know if they’ll carry over to the US side of Amazon - but worth a try if you’re looking.

7" faceplate amazon.ca/dp/B0991QBB3S $60 CDN
5" 4J ind. chuck amazon.ca/dp/BOBWGWK3YV $125 CDN

Cheers
Malcolm

BTW - if you wan to use standard toolposts with this lathe, you will have to mill off a boss on the compound slide that the recessed 4 position tool post fits over - or buy a QC tool post set from the supplier. p/n and price unknown.