Good semi beginner Mill/Drills

jcoulson64

jcoulson64

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Hey guys;

Just wondering if anyone had any recommendations on which Mill/Drill (Milling Drill Press) a guy should go for for metal work in around the 1500-2500 dollar range. I don't really know much about most of the brands, their quality levels, ones to avoid, features that would be considered a must have or features to avoid.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
Lots of guys that have never used one, will poo-poo the round column mill drills, but for a guy that is going to mostly be scribing a line and cutting to it, they work pretty well and are a better drill press than almost anything else out there for drill presses these days.

Guys make a big deal out of that you lose index when you move up and down, but mostly, see above, you are pretty much mainly cutting to a line, rather than using consecutive operations at different Z heights.

$2500, if you shop carefully, should outfit you with some basic tooling as well as a Mill Drill. Shop the sales, look for discount coupons, etc. Look at the RF30/RF31 style, along with a set of hold downs, a vise, some mill holders, and some mills.
The Seig X-2/X-3 machines have a dovetail way and are a bit smaller for the money, but give you options you don't get with the RF types, as far as CNC and such, but if just starting out, you likely are not as concerned about that.

Keep and eye on what trades in your area on Kijiji and the like, and don't try to buy the be-all of mills as your first one, as you can easily spend a small fortune, as well as end up without enough tools to be able to use it. Buy basic to learn basics, if you stay with it, you can upgrade and sell along, or side sideways (as in, keep them to also use), the tools you started with.

I can commend the series called Mill Drill Adventures, published in one of the Meatlworking series of books, IIRC, published by Village Press, the folks that print Home Shop Machinist magazine. Worth poking around the Village Press Website.
All the hobby grade machines are essentially built down to a price, if they were not, we would not have any affordable metal working machinery available to us. Each has it's shortcomings, and each of those can be worked around, with, or fixed, with a bit of effort. It's the price of affordable tools.

Cheers
Trev
 
If space isn't an issue, why not go for a used full size mill like a Bridgeport. They hold their value, they're American made and you can get unlimited parts and tooling. One just went on Kijiji (Mississauga Ont.) this morning for $2700.00 obo. with power feed and digital readout.
 
The knee is the section of the machine which allows the table to be raised and lowered to allow different size work pieces to be placed under the cutter.

On the RF30/RF31 style, this is adjusted by raising and lowering the head. The King PDM30 is an equivalent to the RF30. Any of the Benchtop mills with dovetail ways work the same way, the head goes up and down, instead of the table. I have no experience at all with those, other than twiddling a few handles in the showroom, cannot really give you a solid opinion other than to say that they too are all built to a price, and most could benefit from some care and attention, and all the 'Mill Drill Adventures articles I referenced above, would apply, at least in principle, even if the parts are a little different shape and size.

Most of the Import tools are sourced from pretty much the same places, with some variations, but they tend to follow the part numbering scheme fairly well too.

As much as I can agree with the idea of buying a Bridgeport or better type mill, unless you also have the shop space, and other support equipment to move stuff of that size, it can become a minor logistical nightmare to have to move the stuff if required. I have moved a couple different RF30 style mill drills myself, and with a little disassembly a guy can get one up or down a flight of decent stairs, if he had to.

If you can go bigger than a bench top mill drill, but cannot really justify a full size Bridgeport, the A1S style mills are worth a look too. Busy Bee sells one such as their part number Craftex CX603, it's sorta halfway between a BP and a RF30 type mill. Not going to be on the budget stated though, unless you get lucky on a used one.

Where are you located? I know a bunch of guys in the Edmonton area that have formed a casual club of sorts, to get together once a month and BS about what they are doing. Good guys, and the Jungle Drums method of finding what you want has usually been about the most effective method of finding tools for me. I know of a club in Regina as well. Saskatoon, too.

Cheers
Trev
 
For what I've learned...read the fine print. Or just the bold print. When I bought my mill I read '300 lbs' and though sweet, buddy and I should be fine. Well it sucked. Vomit-level heavy. We got it arranged, and I went back when I could walk again and read the manual and it was 300 kg, or about 660 lbs.

Figuring out how to move the beasts is a big deal. My mill is just a little First brand Taiwan thing.
 
I bought a new one about 10 years ago it's a RF-45 it's a Taiwanese machine with the square column and you should consider this feature over a round column .
Mine was about $4000 at the time but a Chinese version is available at a lower cost I use mine regularly it is nice for drilling and milling light stuff
 
I have a Chinese round-column mill-drill. Got it for $1500 and it runs on 220v single-phase. If I could lay my hands on a $2,700 Bridgeport (even one in need of rebuilding), I would go that way. Sure, it might cost $4,000 by the time it's properly set up (perhaps more, if you need a phase-converter to run 3-phase electricity), but a Bridgeport is capable of an order of magnitude better accuracy, even as an analog machine.

Yes, it's a pain to move - I moved a 1,500lbs Hardinge lathe, it can be done. Go to www.practicalmachinist.com and they have many threads which can show you how to move big equipment safely without special expertise and with only rental tools. In my case, buddy loaded the lathe into the back of my pickup truck with a forklift; it came out 1,000km later in my driveway by having a tow-truck's boom lift it 6" out of the bed; roll the truck forward, and eeease it down to blocks on the ground. It went the rest of the way balanced on a pallet-jack. It can be done. Stairs? Well, you might think twice, then, but I'm sure that's been done, too.

And don't be put off by 3-phase power. All I have here is a 100amp single phase panel, but with the above website and a bunch of reading I got my 3-phase lathe running beautifully, with all of its features intact. Mills are easier than lathes! Consider it an interesting 2-months-of-Saturdays project.
 
wagnerb said:
I have a Chinese round-column mill-drill. Got it for $1500 and it runs on 220v single-phase. If I could lay my hands on a $2,700 Bridgeport (even one in need of rebuilding), I would go that way. Sure, it might cost $4,000 by the time it's properly set up (perhaps more, if you need a phase-converter to run 3-phase electricity), but a Bridgeport is capable of an order of magnitude better accuracy, even as an analog machine.

Yes, it's a pain to move - I moved a 1,500lbs Hardinge lathe, it can be done. Go to www.practicalmachinist.com and they have many threads which can show you how to move big equipment safely without special expertise and with only rental tools. In my case, buddy loaded the lathe into the back of my pickup truck with a forklift; it came out 1,000km later in my driveway by having a tow-truck's boom lift it 6" out of the bed; roll the truck forward, and eeease it down to blocks on the ground. It went the rest of the way balanced on a pallet-jack. It can be done. Stairs? Well, you might think twice, then, but I'm sure that's been done, too.

And don't be put off by 3-phase power. All I have here is a 100amp single phase panel, but with the above website and a bunch of reading I got my 3-phase lathe running beautifully, with all of its features intact. Mills are easier than lathes! Consider it an interesting 2-months-of-Saturdays project.
Click to expand...

You have an HLV-H lathe??
 
EHG said:
And I find my old J-Head Bridgeport a light duty mill. Weight 2,200 lbs.
Deadly accurate though for my gunsmithing purposes and tooling easy to get.
YMMV
Click to expand...

From an industrial standpoint, they are a light duty mill, for a hobby guy, they can appear to be the holy grail, though.

There are an awful lot of guys out there that would look at a BP about the way they look at pretty much anything from Busy Bee, with disdain. They are a pretty decent mill for light work, though, and offer probably one of the best overall flexible layouts for a reasonably cheap price, even when new, so became the 'standard' mill in a lot of shops.

For me, what I miss most on my mill, is a DRO, as once you get used to using one, you get awfully spoiled. But for a hobby guy, esp one using a corner of a basement room as The Shop, that can be pretty extravagent.

Maybe the best question so far for the OP is the one about the planned size of his projects. Sending him looking for something he can neither move nor use isn't really helping him out that much.

Cheers
Trev
 
I have a No. 45 Mill-Drill that has the round column and is belt driven ( I think the newer No 45's have a dove tail column and are gear driven). Not a bad machine for the cost but a few more bucks at the time would have bought a gear driven machine.

Two things about the gear driven machines that I really wish I had on quite a few occasions. The speed change capabilities on the gear machine are so much more easier and quicker to make than a belt machine. You might not think it a big deal to change belts but it can get very time consuming if you have to go from an aluminum cut to a steel cut to a wood or plastic cut all within an afternoon. changing speeds on my machine involves a hand full of wrenches and pry bars, a screwdriver or two and being perched up a step ladder that wants to tip over when pulling on said tools... most times I end up saying "screw the speed change" and end up buggering a cutter or two or taking twice as long to make the cut that it should.

The second big issue I have with my machine is that the head is solid, I cant rotate it either way to facilitate sideways drilling into a work piece. Might seem trivial to a first time buyer but lots of times I have needed a hole in something that just is a bugger to hold flat to the table or won't hold properly orientated in a vise so your spending hours trying to manufacture a holding jig that you might only ever use once.
 
I have a CX601. Definitely a huge step up from a mini mill, but miles away from a Bridgeport. But for the gunsmithing I do it has worked well. Can't hog out big cuts, but generally don't need to.
Just finished adding DRO to it. Best $300 I've spent, not only because there is a lot of backlash on the machine, but also because my math and trig skills are pretty poor. For making simple things like a front sight, it can cut the time required in half.
 
I agree trevj.
I bought it for hobby so it indeed serves my purpose flawlessly. It doesn't do heavy cuts well, but then again I rarely need to do that. With R8 tooling and collets being 7/8 or 1" is really about max for these. I have used bigger end or ball mills, but only on wood or synthetic stocks.
Any shop I've been to I see CNC mills a lot bigger running around the clock. Once in awhile you see an old BP sitting in the corner for the odd manual job
 
I managed OK with a medium size round column mill/drill for quite a few years. It was an RF20 or RF25. The secret was some shop made very low over hang end mill holders. By reducing the overhang it was able to cut far more than I'd have expected. But with long overhang it was a chattermatic.... For all that we dis the round column machines for their lack of a key for the Z axis I can only think of a couple of times where I ran into issues related to the lack of vertical travel other than the quill. But I did have to perform some serious set up gynnastics in a few cases to work within that limit.

So.... My own feelings are that if you trip over a good deal on a round column mill/drill then don't run away. It can do a lot of great work. But if you are looking at buying new I would say that the way to go is one of the new style dovetail column mill/drills that have taken over in recent years. All the features are there other than size and mass. But for the price that's typical and something you work around by limiting the size of tooling you use and in the amount of metal you remove per pass.

In your price range I think I'd strongly look at Busy Bee's CX600 When I looked at this machine I liked most of what I saw. The one downside was the relatively narrow front to rear depth of the column. But if you can fabricate a spinal brace for it I think it would really stiffen up the nodding rigidity of the column and make this a first class table top machine. The rest of it seems pretty much there. And within that possible need for the mod to really let the machine shine it seems to have all the right stuff at a mid range price point for that style of machine.
 
I have a cx600 equivalent, and it's definitely a good enough machine, much more so than a mini mill. It can be a bit limber though.

If you were looking at the cx601, it's bigger brother, I'd advise you towards the cx611 instead. For the same money, it's a much nicer design. You don't appreciate the low handwheel for raising and lowering the head until you have to reach up every time to change it. That squat appearance means that materials have been added where they will help resist forces.
 
Just reading the specs between the cx601 and the cx611. The table on the 601 is 8x33", and the 611 is 6x21". The 611 has less horse power, less drilling capacity etc, and weighs about 75kg less. So they aren't quite equivalent machines. That said, I agree with you about the z axis hand wheel location being much nicer on the 611.

My garage isn't very warm. That stiffens up the hand wheels quite a bit. Together with the less than ergonomic height of the z axis wheel on the 601 can make it a bit of a chore.

That's the thing about milling machines, their are so many trade offs in features, it can be tough to sort through them. It would be time we'll spent to get some hands on at the show room before making a decision, because the specs don't tell the whole story. Ergonomic issues will become more apparent.
 
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