€œbuying cheap lathes isnt a good idea€
IMO, it depends on the kind of work, for building robots, a chinese lathe will do the job, if you have the possibility of checking before buying, because the quality standards are very different, from decent to very poor or unusable.
Last year we bought a medium size chinese lathe (300*1100) for manufacturing custom made pneumatic cylinders, (because the spindle bore of our very accurate leinen- lathe was too small) and i was surprised about the accuracy of the basic machine, spindle nose tolerances are less then 0,003 mm, bed, supports, cross feed and headstock is also in decent quality (for our utilisation). Price approx. 1500 Euros. But at first I tossed away the original chuck and replaced it by a german Rhm- chuck (price half the whole machine), the quality of the original one was very poor. After a litle adjustment (tailstock, etc€¦.), the machine works very fine.
At home in my basement I have a Super 7 with screwcutting gearbox (bought used for 800 euros, including a lot of accessories from the medical department of the university of heidelberg). IMO the best small lathe for hobby using in the world, but the prices for new ones are ridiculous high. (7000 Euros for the new S7 plus on the continent). Last year in nottingham I visited the myford shop in beeston, afther the first visit, my wife tried to hide my credit card .
My milling machine at home is a very simple chinese mill- drill, but sufficent for almost all kinds of work. For advanced works I have acces to several deckel toolmaker millers.

Regards
Helmut