The ubiqitous Harbor Freight Minilathe is a good tool for the money. I bought this one several years ago, before acquiring the Southbend, when H.F. had one of their sales, ($329) . There is so much info out there on mods and improvements that one could spend most of your time on doing them. I find it great for very small parts. In addition to the standard chucks, I use a 180 DA collets in a MT3 holder.. This holder also fits the Southbend.
I have made some tooling and improvements, and describe some of them in the Minilathe Tooling page and Minilathe Mods Page Page.
