NANO LATHE

[david pierce]

I just came across a lathe I never heard of before called a Nano Lathe. It has a Geneva style bed and comes with a motor, 3 jaw chuck and and ER-11 spindle. The price from the LITTLE MACHINE SHOP is about $300.00. It looks good in the ad and Youtube videos, but I know almost nothing about it. If anybody knows anything about it please post a comment. Nano (probably CENTRAL MACHINERY), also offers a larger bench model which looks like a 7″ bench lathe with a HF mini mill combination machine.
david

[gerene]

David,

I do have one of those nano lathes. It was the first lathe I ever used. I bought it because it was not expensive and wanted to try if machining metal was something I would like to do.
I also bought the conversion kits for converting it to a mini drill and mini mill.
I am now using a Taig lathe most of the time because it is much more rigid than the nano lathe is.
As far as I know, the nano lathe is made by Sieg and known also as the Sieg N1 lathe. It works fine for small items, but the ER-11 collets do not allow to mount watch balances or something similar, because the collet itself gets in the way.
I currently use it mostly set up as a drill. Converting from one to the other takes about 5-10 minutes. The mill setup is not worth much by lack of rigidity. You can only use very thin mills and very shallow cuts.

Hope I could be of any help. Please feel free to ask more specific questions.

Regards,

Jan

[david pierce]

Jan,
It sounds like deja vu UNIMAT. Thanks for the post. This kind of information could save someone from making a purchase that would not fit their applications.
david

[Bob Tascione]

David and Jan,
That looks like it would be a good precision drill press for the money. I’m glad you posted this up here David.
Jan how solid do you find the table feed?

Bob

[gerene]

Bob, your question is a little bit hard to answer (at least for me, having no comparison with other drill presses). I think it is usable, but the table moves upwards for drilling instead of the drill moving down. Maybe this arrangement is also used in other drill presses, I don’t know. I found that positioning and fixing something on the table with the T-slots can be cumbersome. Maybe I am doing something wrong… I use toolmakers clamps most of the time.

Jan

[Bob Tascione]

Hi Jan,
My fault. My question should have been a bit clearer.
I had tried a newer type precision drill press at a friends shop a few years ago and found the table up and down feed to be a little sloppy (side shake). Your table looks like it would be tight since it’s actually the tailstock from the lathe version. The Sincere uses the same setup which is also a GREAT deal. I’m just impressed with the price since it can also be fitted with collets. I have a similar but much older (ancient) drill press with the same up/down table feed. It’s a bit worn but proven to be extremely accurate. I have seen and used better though!
My table doesn’t have slots that can be used for clamping. I probably wouldn’t need to clamp anything to it anyway. I just float the part on the table or use a small vice or holding fixture which can float on the table and lay out the parts using an optical center punch when I need to get really close. David may know of some better machines for the money out there so I hope he reads this and lets us know. At this point though it seems like you got a nice drill press (and Mill & Lathe!) for the price.

Thanks Jan,
Bob

[gerene]

Ok, now I understand your question
The table is indeed solid, no sideshake noticeable for me. As a drill press it is quite ok since forces are only exerted in the axis of the lathe bed. The fact that one can use ER-11 collets for the drills adds of course to the precision.
The weakness is the cross slide for the lathe which is not as rigid as I would like it to be, especially since this is the only way to attach the toolpost.

Jan

[david pierce]

I do not know if this is a better drill press for the money than the NANO but I purchased a low cost jewelers drill press several years ago for $89.00 new from Ebay. You can see what one looks like if you go to Ebay and pull up item #11861903582. As you can see the price has gone up but the press looks the same. The drill press itself was very nice but I was not happy with the chuck so I removed it to replace it with an Albrecht Keyless Chuck. Unfortunately the spindle taper on the drill press would only fit the low precision chuck that came with the machine and nothing else. I measured the spindle and found it to be 10mm so I purchased a 10mm ER-11 spindle from CTC tooling. The longest spindle they had was too short to replace the existing spindle so I machined the ER-11 spindle and added an extension. I used high strength Loctite to bond the two sections together and then turned the extension down to the 10mm shaft diameter. It worked out great. I ended up with an extremely precise drill press at a reasonable price. One nice feature of the ER-11 collets is they can hold carbide tools and a 3 jaw chuck cannot. Albrecht makes a small keyless chuck with diamond impregnated jaws that will hold carbide drills, but they sell for around $500.00. A standard JT-0 straight shank adapter can be purchased from an industrial supply house and the shank can easily be turned down to fit one of the larger ER-11 collets but I have not done this. If this was the only small drill press I had I would have but I also have a Dumore and a Jet with high precision chucks.
david

[Bob Tascione]

Hey David,
I tried that auction number but it says “zero results”. Any chance it’s a different number?

Bob

[david pierce]

Bob,
I checked the number before writing the post by going back to MY EBAY and typing it in. The first number I typed in for another listing bounced back. It may have been purchased and the number pulled by Ebay. There should be many others listed under SMALL PRECISION DRILL PRESS or SMALL SENSATIVE DRILL PRESS. It is a common item and they have been for sale for years. Unfortunately, the price keeps going up as it is doing for the SINCERE LATHE.
david

[Bob Tascione]

Ok, will do.
Thanks David,
Bob

[david pierce]

For really small holes a drill press was made by a company called NATIONAL JET. The machine was able to drill holes in the 1/10,000 range without breaking the drill bits. To maintain the precision necessary, conventional bushings and bearings were unsuitable. Instead, the drill bit was held in a tungston carbide arbor riding in diamond v-blocks. NATIONAL JET is still in business but the drill press is not longer pictured on their website. You can find pictures of this machine on the internet if you look for them.

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