Living with a Chester DB10 super lathe

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Hi everyone, I’m new to the group and looking to buy my first lathe, I seem to be leaning towards the Chester DB10 super lathe for price, size and local to me. People have kindly given me their thoughts on things to consider when choosing a lathe.

But was wondering if anyone on here use a Chester DB10 Super lathe? If so what’s your thoughts?

👍🏻

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Peoples thoughts

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Since you have had no replies, have a look on youtube. I am sure you will find plenty of them on there.

Steve.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

They have not done the "super" version for very long so unlikely to find many owners or videos. But the basic DB10 has been about for a while so look for that or other similar machines with the power cross feed such as Warco

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Thanks for replying, I have searched you tube and the web, but only a couple of vids, ah I thought the db10 super lathe was the latest model from the website.

will keep looking

[Steve NeighbourParticipant @steveneighbour43428]

Hi Paul,

A warm welcome

I have a Warco WM250 which is near identical to the DB10, you'll find there are quite a few derivatives of essential the same lathe on the market, most are made by Weiss in China are they are well made and accurate although often need a little fettling and tweaking when setting up.

am very happy with mine and it is far more capable than some 'it must be made in Britain to be any good ' folk would have you believe.

There is also a really good supply of parts and accessories that will fit most of the clone machines from the various UK suppliers..

Good luck and do keep the feed updated with your progress.

Steve

[Niels AbildgaardParticipant @nielsabildgaard33719]

Posted by Steve Neighbour on 23/09/2020 08:05:05:

Hi Paul,

I have a Warco WM250 which is near identical to the DB10,

Steve

My WM 250 lathe has 27mm/MC4 spindle and is driven by a best german 1.1kW fourpole motor from a HuanYang VFD.

Power and torque has been very satisfactory.

Bed is 140mm wide.

My 918 has 100mm wide bed and met an industrial sewing machine motor 600W/4Nm torque/100-4500 rpm.

The motor is a three phase,has permanent magnets and cannot be stalled at low speed unles I thigthen the belt to a silly degree.

I am ordereing a 1500W/7Nm/100-3000 of same familly for the WM250.

The DB 10 from Chester is more like the 918 I think.

Edited By Niels Abildgaard on 23/09/2020 08:51:21

[IvyParticipant @ivy]

There is a Canadian lady on youtube called "blondihacks". Look for her video "import lathe buying guide". I think her lathe is equivalent to yours.

I like all her videos because she is not afraid to show her mistakes and inexperience in some areas.

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Thanks everyone, jus5 been watching blondihacks brilliant videos thanks for putting me onto them.

think I have narrowed my choice to

Chester db10 approx £1600 has smaller brushed motor but has powered cross feed comes with a stand I don’t need.

warco wm250 approx £1600 has a brushless ac motor I think, but no powered cross feed, 50mm longer than db10

warco wm250v approx £2000. Which is more than I wanted to pay but appreciate the better ac motor and vfd, not sure it justifies the 3xtra £400. But has power cross feed

Was trying to see blondihacks lathe in videos, it was a pm1022v I think, looks more like the warco

[Steve NeighbourParticipant @steveneighbour43428]

Paul,

Your final decision may ultimately be driven by availability . . C19 has had significant impact on supply of machines, unless you're happy to wait (or are lucky its in stock)

I waited 15 weeks from order to delivery for mine 😩

I didnt mind too much as it meant I could progress my workshop to 'almost' finished without the distraction of the 'new toy'

Steve

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

I'm very happy with my Warco WM250V. It runs smoothly and has proved capable of all the work I've put to it.

It's easy to modify the accessory baseplate Warco sell to take the Myford double-swivel vertical slide. Together with the fine powered crossfeed, that makes a lot of milling possible on small to medium components. You can swing the swivel slide out of the way, so you can keep it mounted must of the time. It might be worth checking that the crossslide T-slots are spaced the same as Warco, and if they are you can probably use most or all relevant Warco accessories – Chester didn't appear to offer a baseplate when I looked.

I found the Warco 3-jaw chuck particularly good – maybe Chester use the same one – and even after 5 years' use it can hold true within much less than a thou on its inner jaws. One effect of that is that it makes me unwilling to change chucks in case I spoil that with a tiny splinter of trapped swarf or suchlike!

I'm not really qualified to comment on motors. I find that the Warco can stall with high-torque work like screwcutting at the low end of the higher speed range, but that's saved me from a number of broken tools and damaged workpieces, and never resulted in any further trouble, so I'm not objecting.

[Brian GParticipant @briang]

My son has a DB10 Super and like any machine it is built to a price and has good and bad points.

On the plus side:

The power cross feed is really useful, and makes parting off a pleasure. Although the minimal gearbox isn't much help with screwcutting (most threads require exchange of the changewheels) it is handy to be able to switch feed rates on the fly (although the machine has to be stopped to do this).

The ball clutch on the separate feed shaft is adjustable and has prevented several jam-ups. This is a feature that we wouldn't have got on a leadscrew-only machine.

The work envelope is excellent for the price, especially on the long bed version which we have. Well worth the extra if only because the tailstock can be moved so far out of the way – a real luxury when moving up from a mini-lathe.

The motor is adequate but a bit gutless, especially at low speeds, whilst the lack of a backgear means that we tend to leave the machine in the low range. To be honest we expected this, but realised that even if we had to buy a larger motor and VFD later, it would still be cheaper than the equivalent from Warco (This isn't criticising Warco, our other lathe came from them).

The variable speed means that I can increase the speed as the diameter reduces when facing or parting.

The backplate design, which uses a rotating collar and three bolts, is almost as quick and easy to use as a camlock.

The slotted cross-slide means that it is possible to fit a rear toolpost or to bolt down a part for boring.

On the down side:

The emergency stop button on top of the headstock is awkwardly placed and duplicates the adjacent stop button. After we move I plan to relocate it to the tailstock end.

The motor is really gutless at low speeds (but on the plus side, providing you hit STOP immediately, a stall is less damaging than breaking things).

The toolpost sits on a boss which is integral with the compound slide, so that to fit an Aloris type toolpost you have to either bore out the toolpost body and cam (Chester will do this if you order the toolpost with the lathe), which can only be done with a piston type, or machine down the boss and make an extension for the stud. We chose the latter option, which means we can fit the wedge type later if we wish.

The lathe comes without a faceplate.

The swivel mounting for the compound slide is clamped down to the cross-slide with two bolts in the same way as a 9×20. As a result it is rather flexible, although to be fair, this seems to be the case with most (all?) similar lathes. Replacing this with a four bolt mounting is on our "to do" list.

The carriage does not move a full number of millimetres per revolution, and as a result the scale isn't as useful as we hoped, normally we set the tool to the end-point and just zero the scale.

The tailstock is designed to take a morse taper without a tang, and several millimetres of travel is lost if you use a drill with a tang. Worse than this however, the end of the screw is small enough to fit inside the thread of a drawbar type taper so that it cannot be ejected. Easily cured with a screw-in plug but annoying.

Are we happy with our choice?

Yes. The lathe is nice and solid with a work envelope that suits our needs. The machine was a good price, especially as it included the cabinets (even though in our case it it fixed to a workbench and the cabinets are stored in the loft). Its best features, the separate feed shaft with overload clutch, the chuck mounting and the basic screwcutting/feed gearbox are all things we couldn't add later, whilst its bad points can be fairly simply fixed (although I might try the low range conversion that was featured in MEW for a Warco before splashing out on a VFD).

Brian G

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Thanks again everyone,

Sometimes it’s to easy to over think these sort of things!

Both Chester and warco will do most jobs and Both are reasonably available.

My main concern is the small motor on the db10, As Brian G mentioned.

As for the tool post warco do a ready machined quick change post to fit wm250v and I’m guessing it may fit the db10?

Paul

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

After a visit to Chester hobby today who were very helpful. I’m pretty sure I’m going for the DB10. 👍🏻

[Ian Skeldon 2Participant @ianskeldon2]

I've had a standard DB10 for several years now and it's ok. I had to do a lot of work to get it as accurate as it should have been, on it's own that doesn't mean much, mine may have been a poor one yours might be a great one, I would advise that you don't site where you can't get all the way around it. I needed to strip it and take the head off the bed and for this you need access to the rear.

I am disappointed with the thread cutting capabilities but if you have checked for sure that the range is all that you will ever need from it then that's not going to be a problem.

As mentioned by Brian G the mounting of the tool post could be better but equally this will apply to most of these size/type of lathe.

Buying one is safer than buying a used British but you may want/need to tweak here and there to get it to the level you require.

Ian

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Hi Ian thanks for the info, I appreciate for the price it is not going to be without it’s possible pitfalls, looking at other chinese makes they are all going to be very much the same, and same risks. I can’t justify buying a british one as price easily doubles and that’s for a used one.

im looking to do build small models and small parts for my motorbike, along with things I don’t know yet.

suppose I’m looking to do metric threads upto 16mm but that’s just a guess.

[anthony brooks 3Participant @anthonybrooks3]

Interesting thread. here in the US there is one major flaw to the Chinese lathes. We are not given the option of 'true metric.' Only 'sort-of-Imperial.' I called Real – Bull and when I asked if they would bring in a metric version, I got a solid NO. I ended up with an old South Bend.

The anti-Chinese sentiment is high here, but there is not much alternative. I have to assume that the Chinese are improving all the time and that a new Chinese should be more accurate than my 1951 SB!

All the best with your purchase!

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Thanks Antony

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

After long deliberation I Just bought the DB10 longbed version, thanks everyone for you help and input.

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Just took deliver6 of my DB10 long bed lathe, a little unexpected as it arrived earlier than expected so it’s just sitting on the garage floor until I finish my night shifts 👍🏻

Hopefully put a photo up soon as I’m sorted

[Stuart Cox 3Participant @stuartcox3]

Posted by Paul Williams 38 on 13/11/2020 05:10:32:

Just took deliver6 of my DB10 long bed lathe, a little unexpected as it arrived earlier than expected so it’s just sitting on the garage floor until I finish my night shifts 👍🏻

Hopefully put a photo up soon as I’m sorted

Hi Paul, did you try the lathe yet? I am interested to see how it was for you as I am considering buying one.

Thanks Stuart

[RobinParticipant @robin]

I just bought 2 lathes from Chester. Unlike Warco they didn't come with faceplates,

I said, I will need faceplates" and they gave me faceplates.

Be sure to ask for faceplates if not on the list

[Tifa 8572Participant @tifa857287838]

I bought a DB10 in September and so far it's doing everything I want. It was as big as I had room for, and it more or less was within budget. Low speed torque could be better, but for the money it certainally does the job. Up to now I've done a little fettling, fitted an AXA QCTP, and a DRO.

The QCTP needed a bit of work to make it fit, but it's transformed things speed and convenience wise.

I also purchased the DRO from Chester (too lazy here to try to work out what I actually needed!) was a little more expensive than BangGood or Ebay, but it came with most of the fittings & fixtures required, so possibly worth it. It's an absolute dream to use. Fitting the DRO was easy enough, everything is the perfect size, and fits up nicely, some allen bolts supplied were the wrong size or missing, nothing serious, just a PITA and there's a bit of drilling and tapping required. The display unit is a lovely bit of kit, in a diecast ally casing, 200% better than the cheaper plastic clones.

Al in all, really happy with it.

Recommended.

[Paul Williams 38Participant @paulwilliams38]

Hi Stuart

apologies for such a slow reply, yes my db10 long bed is in position with some use.

considering my slow reply have you bought a lathe yet? Which did you choose?

kind regards

[Author]

Posts