Mine bolts to the head of the lathe. There is an adaptor plate that can be used to mount it on a lathe with a threaded spindle. Little machine shop carries the one that I use and the adaptors. I'm pretty sure you can get it on to a jet mini, but I am also pretty sure that if you did that and flipped the switch then the jet mini would croak. You would probably want to have at least 1 hp to drive one. It's heavy duty! Because 5c is a larger diameter collet, it can be used to hold bigger things, but the difference in maximum capacity is not going to be that much. The real benefit is being able to use the 5c accessories. You have collets, you have machinable collets, expandable collets, 3 and 4 jaw chucks, and indexible heads to name a few. So if you want to switch from a collet grip to a jaw chuck, there is a multitude of jaw chucks that can fit into the collet chuck without removing it from the machine. Then you can get an index head which can be mounted to a drill press or vertical mill. The index head is a rotary attachment and you can get them really cheap, like as low as $30. So now you can pull a pen with the collet and slip it into that attachment and drill sequences of holes. If you opt to get a metal lathe down the road, then this is a great set up. Then if you want to get into a vertical mill, you can still use the same sets of collets too. Mind you, collet sizes can be interchangable between machines regardless, so if you have an R8 collet chuck for a lathe you can get an R8 size vertical mill, but you won't have as many accessory options with the R8 size. You can purchase 5C collets in sets pretty cheap too. If you have a big wood lathe, then you could definitely run a 5C collet set, but not on a mini lathe. My lathe struggles to get that collet chuck spinning if it is in high gear and my lathe is no joke. Compared to the Beall set up, my collet chuck and a set of collets was cheaper. It's not a chuck for everyone...the bottom line is collet chucks are great to have, regardless what one you choose. If you are planning on upgrading in the future..then think about the tooling you are using now and if you can upgrade that for more than one function. It's nice to only buy a tool once if possible.