Hi-Tech Diamond 8" All-U-Need Lapidary Machine, Rock Polishing Kit

High quality machine , arrived in perfect condition. Packing was outstanding. Love this flat top. Easy to set up worked perfectly from day one.

So far so good

Awesome machine.

Much improvement from my previous machine. Smooth movement and easy to use.

[EDIT] The company reached out to me an and are sending me new pads, with several helpful emails in between. Customer service was stellar, and now that I'm past the initial frustration and anger, this product is a real good one, and I do not regret getting it at all. I bought an 8" FLATLAP, and while putting it together, I have ruined 3 of the pads sent with it because the dumb "easy peel" backing would not peel off. It took all of the adhesive with it. If you are going to put "peel off" coverings, include a damn pull tab or something, I have broken and ruined 3 nails trying to peel this damn this thing off. And it still wouldn't "peel", and is now completely useless. So now my FLATLAP is USELESS unless I PAY for new pads because of your crappy manufacturing on these things. I cannot even begin to express how upset I am. I only included a single pic of a single pad, but of the 4 pads sent, 3 are RUINED because of you bad, horrible, backing.

Works fantastic! Make sure to raise the face plate so you don't get splashed!

This machine is well made.....very solid. I like the different speeds that it has. It's definitely a quality piece of equipment. My only complaint is the drip tank. The knob to turn the water on or off is not exact.....meaning it's hard to tell when it's in the closed position. I think the overall design of the drip tank could have been improved.....and the plastic on/off knob should have been replaced by a brass/metal type valve. Other than this the machine works quite well. I've purchased other equipment from this company and their products are very high quality.

The short of it? I think the base machine is probably good enough, assuming they used good bearings for the shaft. However, the included backing disks are complete garbage, and are not flat, straight from the manufacturer. Read on for the gory details. I even get out my dial indicator to measure the runout. I was really looking forward to getting this and trying my hand at faceting and cabbing some stones. I have to say I *AM* impressed with the base unit itself. I turned it on, after removing the disk holding screw and slowly turned it up to speed. There was a very small amount of vibration, but I did have it set up on a glass patio table. Pretty much, smooth as silk. After spending time putting everything together, I went and got a test stone, rose quartz about 1 ", put on the 180# diamond wheel, and turned on the machine. Holy God!!!! The machine started bucking and vibrating like mad! I had read that the diamond plate disks that you buy already assembled can vibrate, and they say to turn up the RPMs, but this was out of control! They say you need 4000 RPM to get past this vibration, but the machine doesn't go that high. Only 3400 RPM max from the description. I did increase speed slowly, all the way up to max. At max speed, the vibration was SO bad the machine started walking around the table! Seriously, I had to grab it and hold on until it slowed down. Hoping for the best, maybe that after a bit of use, it might get better, I pressed on. I put the water cup on and adjusted everything properly, except for that damn vibration. I ALSO noticed that the diamond plate has an up & down wobbling component. About halfway out from the center, the plate moves up & down SO MUCH that you cannot keep the work pressed against the disk. The work skips Up & down no matter how hard you press. The other disks were not better. I used a sharpie pen thru the hole of the PLASTIC disk to align the pad to the disk. So I know they are centered. The 325 & 600# disks had just as much wobble. The 1200# and felt pads seemed to even up quite a bit after use. Perhaps later tonight I'll break out my machinist tools and measure the vertical runout of the mounting plate for the arbor, and perhaps the vertical travel of the 180# diamond plate/disk also. You can SEE the 180# plate wobble by about 1mm by eye as it slows down, when you shut it off. ( Yeah, keep reading, I DID it now.) I think this could be a GREAT machine, but the company completely cheaped out on the backing disks. Such a shame. NOT WORTH IT FOR $570. As you need to spend probably another $200 to get 4 machined aluminum backing disks. I have already looked at a couple other backing disks made of aluminum, costing $45.00 each. For the price, THIS is what the machine should have come with. OK, I took my cheap dial indicator out and set the unit and indicator setup on my dining table. Not the most stable, but pushing down on the dining table resulted in no movement of the dial, so accurate enough for this check. So, there are 3 mechanical issues, 1 of which is of major importance. 1. The spindle of this machine has questionable bearings. I can push sideways against the spindle of the unit, and deflect the axis by about 5/1000's of an inch. Not much you say? Stick an 8" disk on that spindle, turn it on and push down on it while grinding your stone, even gently, and you can deflect the entire disk downwards where you are pushing. This is a problem, but it's OK if the disk returns to a level spin when you take the stone off. It seems the spindle does at least return to where it started. 2. The top surface of the spindle does not run precisely true. I measured 1-2 thousandths of an inch of runout on the top face of the spindle. The "face" meaning what the disk lies against. This is not good enough for a small diameter spindle piece holding an 8" disk,' 3. The worst item is the wobble of my 180# diamond disk. At the outer edge, the wobble is .013 ! This means as the disk spins, it travels up and down by .013 inches. That is quite a lot of vibration when you're pressing against it, trying to get a smooth surface. Since this is a vertical wobble from the users perspective, it shouldn't make the unit dance all over the table like i experienced. I also measured the runout of the circumference of the disk itself, and this was only off by 1-2 thousandths. I don't know if that is enough to cause such severe vibration. Perhaps the weight distribution of the disk itself is off? Something, as the vibration at max speed is crazy. As you can see from the picture, the vibration was soo much that water was constantly splashing out of the supply cup, getting everywhere. So, to sum up, I think the base machine is probably good enough, assuming they used good bearings for the shaft. However, the included backing disks are complete garbage, and are not flat, straight from the manufacturer. At this point, I'll try buying 1 aluminum backing disk and see if that ends up being actually flat. If I still have problems, I'll return the unit as unusable.