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Anyone have any sugggestions for a quality/reasonable budget 2 or 3 axis milling machine? I'm looking to make aluminum and CF parts. Budget is around $1500.00+/-.
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Check out micromark.com"Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone except God.
Billy GrahamComment
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I just got this mill lathe combo from grizzley. And it's built very well. Accurate to.0001. Small enough to do any of my hobby needs. Considered a bench top mill but it weighs almost 600 lbs. and it is exactly at your $1500 price range. :)
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Machinist by trade, well used to be... I thought it would be cool to have a mini lathe and mill at home to do hobby work. I bought one of the mini lathes with grand plans to convert it to CNC.
As a machinist you are trained in the art of speeds & feeds and how to take cuts- what the tools can and cant handle/do. The bottom line is these mini machines cant take the heat. They are way underpowered, way to loose. For instance my mini lathe best cut into aluminum I could do was .010" per side or it would bog down. The same tool on an "industrial" quality machine could take .125" without breaking a sweat...
Now on the subject of routers in aluminum one thing comes to mind. Chatter... I think that will be a problem for you...42" Osprey, 32" Pursuit, 26" Bling Rocket (rescue), Blizzard Rigger, JAE 21FE rigger, Hobby King rigger (RIP)Comment
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I just bought a sherline lathe with milling attachment. Basstronics is right, it won't take big cuts, but as a hobbyist we don't need a machine to do that. Unless you are trying to make a living doing it, the money spent is probably not justified. Having the ability to rough cut the material you are working on, and get it closer to the size you want machined in the end is important. Then you won't have to take those deep cuts. I am just starting out, but have been studying it all very hard for the last two months. I've read several books, and watched like 100 hours of very informational videos on youtube. There is really some great stuff on youtube that teaches you all about this trade.
There is a lot of modifications you can do to these "cheaper" machines to make them more accurate. For instance, my sherline lathe did not come with an adjustable tailstock, and the alignment was way out of wack. I found a video on youtube on how to make an adjustable tailstock. It was my third project ever on my machine, the first two being a small bushing, and a "perfectly" square block. In the video to demonstrate how accurate the machine was after the mod, and alignment process, he drilled a 1mm hole in a 1.6mm piece of stock. I can replicate that now as well.
I see people cnc this machine all the time. I also see people take the harbor freight, which is really a seige x-2 mill and mod it with cnc, new ball screws, belt drive, or metal gears and have a pretty decent cnc machine for under $1500.
I think the website cnczone.com is a wealth of information. Best thing to do is study a lot to figure out which machine will best suit your needs/budget.Comment
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I haven't had any problems with my mini bench top mill drill. 1/8 cuts in aluminum with a 5/8 2 flute mill and no chatter or bogging down. Set up from factor was pretty good, in my opinion. I made a 3/16 shaft about 8" long and the tail stock was pretty close, .0005 off in 8" piece on the lathe. As far as the mill, you can angle the mill head, so initial set up with a mic was really up to how accurate I wanted it to be. I made some of thes parts that you can see under my rescue boat build springer. In the scale boat forum. For being a "mini bench top" mill/drill/lathe combo for $1500 I'm very happy with it.Comment
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Hi Cooper, I was interested in grizzly equipment as well. I have a couple questions. I can't seem to find on grizzly's web-site the advertised tolerance, as .0001 sounds incorrect to me. I am also wondering how you machined a 3/16" shaft 8" long at a tolerance of .0005 without any shaft deflection?Comment
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If you know your way around machines well enough there is always used. Just gotta be careful you're not buying a worn out abused machine. Some of the deals I've seen in the last couple of years have been insane, bad economy, lot's of small shops going under.
Last summer I helped a friend pick up a 6' long lathe he got for 500$ if you take it away. Started his own hobby business after he retired from GM.If my boats upside down then who owns the one I thought I was driving the last two laps?
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The tail stock was off by .0005 on a 12" steel blank I used to set up the lathe. I also used a live center tail stock. But I did have about .0015 deflection in the middle. My feed rate was .0005/turn. I just made several passes. I did use some emery while spinning. Just one spot the prop got stuck on, but the was towards the chuck end. Didn't make sense to me but I'm not a machinest either. Only thing I'm running into is finding out that I had to make my own tool holders in order to be able to get to the smaller diameter/center on small parts. I'll look I to the specs when I get home later for you. I know shipping is like 150$ but I have a grizzley store in my back yard so to speak.
Oh and I bored a .093 hole about 2-1/2" in that shaft for a wire drive and it came out very precise. I'm no way knowledgeable of machineing work, I just got this and just started to learn. But I did buy a unimat mill/lathe from hk, wish I would have used the $200 or so on milling tools instead. That's why I got this combo- I think this set up will let me make whatever parts I need. Just have to learn how to make them and use it:). !!Comment
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I don't have any direct experience with these table top units, but I do have quite a bit of experience on full size machines and know that the outcome depends a great deal on the person (and their experience/knowledge) using the machine. If you know what you are doing you can easily compensate for a given machines limitations. I have used old worn equipment to machine parts within 10ths.IMPBA 20481S D-12Comment
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I don't have any proper technical schooling but a lifetime of real world experience. I'm not trying to claim that I'm knoweledgeable of proper machineing techniques, I have spent alot of time researching and learning to accomplish what job is at hand. I'm just stateing in my humble opinion that if I can do this then it can't be that hard for others.
And in the other statement I was misleading in the length of the shaft, I did have about two inches in the chuck so the turning part of the shaft would not be able to deflect as much, forgot to say that as I was thinking of total length. Afterwards I trimmed to the length I wanted.Comment
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Yes and I'm pretty happy with this. I know it a lot to spend on a hobby but the orders and trips to lhs never having what I want we'll it will someday make up for it. I would like to take a local machineing class as there are many things I still have questions on.
Hey egneg, Im looking at getting a rotary table, if you have with experience with use would you mind if I asked some advise of you? (In future?)Comment
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