I had this lathe for about a year or so. It is powered by a PWM, or pulse width modulator. This is an electronic device that, instead of delivering a sine wave or direct current to power the motor, delivers square-wave pulses of power. The intended benefit is that with a PWM, you get pulses of full power. Always. You never get less than full power, you always get FULL power. Which should translate into more consistency at the spindle.....in theory! Further, the lathe has a control box that will try to maintain the RPM, however the response is not instantaneous, and I think in the end you end up getting more of a consistent POWER to the spindle, which does not always translate to the same RPM at all times.
The trouble I had, (among a few others) which ultimately lead me to upgrade to a Powermatic 3520C and sell the Laguna, was the way the PWM responds to changing loads was...disconcerting. In the long run, while I would notice a slowdown in RPM when I first applied the tool to the wood, the RPM would ultimately settle back to what I had dialed in (or within a "step"...steps are a PWM thing, which is why that lathe does not support continuous RPM settings but instead has discrete RPM values you can dial in). The thing that was disconcerting was not so much the changes in RPM, but how I could FEEL the POWER behind the blank changing. When I was turning larger items, and I've turned blanks up to 14" in diameter on the 1524, so pretty big, the changes in power left me wanting to take the tool away...it was a bit jarring, and I didn't really feel entirely safe with a large diameter item turning at around 45mph surface rotational speed.
This is in great irony, as when I bought the lathe, I was TOTALLY bought into the PWM advantage! It was one of the main things I wanted about the lathe. The other great irony was the "precise point" feature of the tailstock, which also ended up being....well, kind of a joke IMO (more in a sec.) In theory, the PWM and control box would maintain RPM instantly. In practice, it was a little janky, and I just...I had a lot harder time controlling my tools in the wood than with any other lathe I have used. The issue is double sided...its not just that when you increase load (i.e. apply tool to wood), that the RPM slows down first before it speeds up. On the other side, when load is decreased, the RPM will increase for a bit before returning to setpoint. I think that both sides of the
laggy response curve there are problematic. The "time to settle" never seemed to be consistent to me, so it kind of made it hard to use the lathe...when can you reapply your tool to the wood...? If you reapply too fast, what happens with the RPM? (In my experience, it can get really janky at times! The RPM can jump up, down again, then up again, and then if you remove the tool again, it will then "spin off" like that again! Which just makes judging how to actually turn a piece of wood that much more complicated and confusing!)
In my case, the lathe was used (by someone other than myself) to turn round several logs. Large logs. They were probably 8" or so in diameter, and about 1.5 feet long or so. Something such a lathe as the Revo 1524 should have been able to handle... I think four of these logs were basically stripped of their bark and rounded. When I got back to using the lathe myself, it couldn't handle a load. I put on just a longworth chuck, and the thing couldn't turn it at a sustained RPM, and I had RPM dropouts to around 50 rpm. Trying to turn anything resulted in the lathe stalling entirely. After a very long and drawn out ordeal with Laguna, they ultimately agreed something had been fried, the entire headstock was eventually replaced (but not after first trying to replace the control box, then the motor itself, neither of which seemed to resolve the issue...and other issues started cropping up throughout the whole ordeal).
In addition to the PWM issues and what was apparently a fried headstock, I also had problems with the tailstock. This is the other great irony. The thing, besides the PWM, that ultimately lead me to getting the Revo 1524 was "Precise Point", the feature of the tailstock quill that allows it to be repointed. You loosen this ~1" thick plate at the front of the tailstock, and you can shift it (and the quill) around a little bit. Rather than having to shift around your headstock and try to shim out your tailstock, it seemed like a much easier way to correct pointing.
The idea is a good one, but, sadly, I think the implementation is fundamentally flawed. The other major issue I had with this lathe, which plays into my previous comment about not really feeling safe using it, was an unstable quill. For precise point to work, the quill angle needs to be adjustable. In order to support that, the tailstock is effectively hollowed out. Instead of the entire quill being fully supported by a near-identical hole bored into the tailstock, on any Laguna lathe with Precise Point, the quill is held only by that ~1" thick piece of metal at the front of the tailstock, and nothing else. Further, the precision of the hole bored through that piece of metal is not as precise as even a cheap $500 lathe. That left the quill free to wiggle a bit, and it had a notable droop of about 2mm or so at full extension. The droop was inevitable even when the locking lever was mostly tightened as well. This inevitably meant that any live center point would usually contact the bank off-center, resulting in a wobble!
Combine the quill issues and wobble, with the inconsistencies in lathe power and rpm, and I really didn't like turning with that lathe. It just didn't feel stable or safe. I contacted Laguna about the tailstock/quill/precise point issue, and they ultimately ghosted me on that issue. The only fix they offered was this tiny clip of metal, about 1mm thick, that was supposed to be inserted into the groove in the quill and bolted to the 1" thick precise point plate. Supposedly that was to fix the drooping issue. It really didn't do anything...the clip had to be jammed into the groove in the quill DEEP, and that groove wasn't machined all that well, so the depth varied over the length of the quill extension. In the long run I sold the lathe, as I ended up not really wanting to use it.
I tried, and tried...but, in the long run, I just couldn't get used to the funky behavior of the PWM and how power changed and in an inconsistent and unusual way.
I ended up I buying a Powermatic 3520C to have a bigger lathe capable of turning larger items. Its more expensive, by about two fold (or at least, the one I purchased on sale was, these days I think it might be more around $5600), but...I feel the investment was extremely worth it. All of the issues I had with the Revo 1524 are non-existent with the Powermatic. The spindle is driven by a VFD, and its amazing. It seems to support pretty much infinitely variable RPM (although at the extremes, very low or very high, there are some limits here). It also has a much, much, MUCH more natural response to change in load. The initial slowdown, then eventual speed up that I always experienced with the Laguna and its PWM does not occur. Power seems to remain very consistent, and you don't feel any disconcerting variations while you are turning. There may in fact be a bit of a droop in RPM when the load changes a lot (i.e. if you start removing lots of wood say off the side of a gouge during rough shaping), but the way the Powermatic responds overall, I never feel any of that jerkiness with sudden changes that I did with the Laguna. I never feel like I have to take the tool off the wood.
I think what you are experiencing with the Laguna, is "normal" due to the design of the power system and motor. Its driven by a PWM, and a control system that EVENTUALLY tries to keep power and RPM the same. But PWM's operate in steps, they don't allow infinite variability (technically, the steps could be made small enough that you wouldn't notice changes in steps, and a control box could probably be devised that would ramp the PWM up to reacquire RPM in a way that felt more natural and less disconcerting, I guess), and that results in a very different feel when turning on such a lathe. Some people seem to be fine with it, I myself could just never get used to how it behaved, and with the other problems, it ended up just not being the lathe for me. The unstable quill issue just compounded the feeling of...well, lack of safety and certainly lack of certainty with regards to how and when to apply the tool to the wood. I've used Nova, Wen, Powermatic and Jet lathes. None of these have ever had these problems. Jet lathes, while generally pretty simple and usually lacking fancy features, are VERY stable lathes, and I always felt that the way RPM changed and responded to changes in load was also very natural (maybe even more so than the Powermatic with its VFD). I think that is a very important aspect of a lathe, particularly if you are turning larger, bulkier blanks. With all the power invested in spinning large objects like that, "weird" behavior is the LAST thing you need!
Well, there's my experience. Hope it...helps you figure out what to do.
