Grizzly G0698, Laguna 1847, Craftex CT128N ( from Busy Bee Tools in Canada)

[Frank Denny]

Just a question? Can anyone tell me the difference between the 3 above models except the color and price? The parts list from each manual looks identical. I know they are advertised with variable speeds from 0-1200 and 0 to 3200 RPM and there has been some posting about the Grizzly not running smooth below 250 RPM and I find my Craftex is the same.

[Gary Max]

Here's the real big question -------------which company offers the best service?????

[Roger Chandler]

Frank,

I have the Grizzly G0698, and have a thread on the AAW forums in which the other models have been discussed at length [355 posts on the thread] and the "hunt" you speak of is the way that the inverter is programmed. It was explained to me by an electrical engineer, that when a unit is run for extended periods of time at low rpm, that it can cause the motor to overheat, and cause premature failure. The inverter is programmed to hunt or search a little at low speed to make the user get the rpms up.

Now, on the low belt setting, mine will run smoothly at 70 rpm, and on the high belt setting it will run smoothly at 175 rpm, which is a good bit lower than they say on the specs. My unit is a year old, and is broken in now, and it has been a superb performing lathe and has torque and power to spare for everything I have thrown at it so far.

I don't think that the lathe is just generic and has different paint schemes........I believe that Grizzly has their own specs that they mandated to the manufacturer for the inverter. Each company I think can order units to their specifications. The last I heard there have been about a half dozen units that had a circuit board issue with boards supplied by Toshiba, and they are working to get this fixed. The vast majority of the units have been fine, and Grizzly will stand behind their unit with service and parts.

To date, after a year with mine, I could not have asked for better performance. I wish those that had the problems [a very few] had not had a bad experience, but I don't think the issues were any more with the Grizzly than all the motors that Jet had to replace for knocking problems. The Jet and the Grizzly have some connection in the manufacturing as a number of the parts on both machines are identical.