It is a generic Chinese export design. You can get basically the exact same lathe from any number of other importers, the main difference being the paint color. If that. Defects may be hiding beneath that paint job because these are fairly cheap castings. They don't want to throw out many castings for quality control reasons, so they will just spackle and fill any holes, as long as they don't interfere with the machined surfaces. You would only discover that after you strip the paint, which most people of course never do. It's mostly just cosmetics anyway. Also the Chinese often times have a real hard time to line up the bearing seats properly, but all that does is give a little more runout , which for beginning woodturning purposes does not have to be the end of the world. But the geometry should not be too wonky. At the very least, if you put centers into head and tailstock, their tips need to line up. And the axes should be parallel to the bed ways. Sadly you can only really determine that with several hundred bucks' worth of measuring equipment. But if you put a large forstner bit into a drill chuck in the tail stock and drill into a piece of wood chucked on the spindle (or screwed to the faceplate if you don't have a chuck yet), and you get really bad chatter, there is probably a misalignment. If the headstock spindle points sideways, it is probably easy to correct but if it points up or down, it will be a bigger challenge. In any event though, I would still not buy the HF lathe because I think they only sell the five-speed version. (They don't let me access the web site currently beause of my adblocker and/or cookie suppressor.) Basically the exact same machine is also available with three-speed pulleys plus variable motor speed, from other vendors, and although the motor speed control is achieved with fairly cheap electronics, I would take that over fixed speeds any day. Especially since the lowest speed of the fixed-speeds version is already 650 rpm, which is uncomfortably fast for trueing up larger unbalanced blanks. However, the five-inch three-speed/variable speed version also starts at about 650 rpm. So what you should do is spend a little more and get at least the Grizzly T25920. Or whatever the vendor of your choice chooses to call his version of that exact same machine. It has six inches of center height, so you can mount blanks up to about twelve inches, and EDIT: in the latest version, speeds start out at only 300 rpm, which may still not be quite ideal for large unbalanced blanks but it is a damn sight better than twice-as-fast. And it's only $125 more, which is a complete no-brainer. (Earlier versions of this machine, and possibly other vendors' versions that remain on sale, start out at 650 rpm.) Also, if you don't want to spend several years learning how to be an Indian woodturning yogi , you need to spend another couple hundred bucks on tools and accessories . For starters. You can make do without a Jacobs chuck, although it is nice to have, and you can make your own basic screw chuck , and every lathe usually comes with a spur drive, faceplate and live center. But beside the basic chisels, scrapers and gouges, you want at least a basic "dead" center and a basic four-jaw chuck with dovetail jaws for the headstock spindle. (If you want to save money in the long run, splurge on a set of "Piranha" or "shark tooth" jaws like in the video.) Some drills. Lots and lots of sand paper. Dust extraction. Some tools to measure wall thickness. Definitely some sort of grinder to sharpen your HSS tools and help cobble together your own tools, jigs and solutions. A router if you haven't got one already, plus an extra long 8mm HSS bit, as the most cost-effective way to make the largest bowl blanks that will fit on your machine. It all adds up.