findmall MT2 Medium Duty Live Center 60 Degree Live Tailstock Center Fit for CNC Lathes, Ordinary Manual Lathes and High-Speed Lathes

This live center works better than I expected, I used it for quite some time on a project and there was no heat buildup or unwanted movement at any time, great center for the money!

The media could not be loaded.  I’m fairly new to machining so this is my first live center, but I am a jeweler who requires (more like has an obsession with) good tools, so I like to think I know high quality when I see it, and for $30, the quality of this is amazing. The finish is perfect, the knurling is well done, the bearing seems to move nicely (maybe a little stiff when you spin it by hand, but as far as I know that’s exactly how live centers are supposed to be), I checked the the cone with my indicator and it’s more perfect than I’ll likely ever be able to machine anything. Fits perfectly into the tail stock of my South Bend 9”. Really have nothing bad to say about this thing so far, it’s seems well worth $30, more even.

Great for our needs

This review is for the MT2 live center.This live center is a great bargain. I use it for penturning.I used a Mitutoyo dial indicator with a sensitivity of 0.0001" per increment to measure the runout at the tip and the runout came out to be around only 1/4 to 1/3 of the 0.0001" increment, i.e. the measured runout was about 0.00003" or roughly 3/100,000 of an inch. That's ten times more precise than the advertised concentricity of 0.0003".It's NOT carbide-tipped like the Amazon product description says. There is no evidence of any brazing. You can see that in the magnified pictures of the tip. It has a single-piece steel cone with a Rockwell C hardness of around 61 to 65.Because this live center is so well made and costs so little, I bought two more as spares in case the bearings on my first one wear out. These two extra ones both have equally ultra low measured runout. This level of ultra high precision is nothing short of amazing for such a low priced item. Although I don't need to have anywhere near this level of ultra high precision for penturning use, it's still nice to know it's manufactured so precisely.Although buying Chinese machine accessories is still often a hit and miss adventure, this live center is clearly a hit. Fifteen to twenty years ago, it was not hyperbole to claim that made in China machine accessories were almost all uniformly junk. It's not so anymore. Many Chinese manufacturers surely have caught up with improved manufacturing standards and quality and their prices are just impossible for western or Japanese products to beat for like quality products.

I have an old (circa 1899 inherited from my grandfather) Southbend lathe and I have always used the fixed centering tailstock that came with it when working small steel pieces. I have burned two of them out by not paying full attention to oiling. That is now a thing of the past. This unit has worked perfectly! No oiling required so you can pay full attention to the piece you are working. Accuracy is perfect.

Noisy bearing.

Machining on a lathe uses these, and if you are a hobbyist this is what you need.

The media could not be loaded.  I was genuinely surprised at the precision. Normally the Chinese stuff I get is absolute junk, but for only $25 for the MT3 version I thought I’d give it a shot. My old American made one has worked great on the big lathe but is too big for my import lathe. I almost expect to turn a taper on the import lathe, and without tail support it’s generally 10-15 (.010-.015) thousandths of taper, but with this live center I got it down to 8 tenths (.0008) which can easily be explained by the ways not being leveled or the inherent lack of rigidity in import lathes. I stuck the tenths indicator on the center and was reading one and a half tenths of runout (.00015) which is half of the advertised run out and is plenty good for anything you’ll ever do on a small import lathe. Overall I was genuinely surprised by and pleased with this center.