First machine Lathe or Mill?

I have been gifted a Logan 9" with the quick change gearbox and lots of tooling. My friend has not used it in quite a while. He has a very nice machine shop at home. He says it is in excellent shape. I have been to his place and it is extremely well kept. For free what can I say. He is lending me a trailer and engine hoist to move it. I have been wanting a lathe for several years and I keep procrastinating. No excuse now. I now have to figure out what to make with it. I have a PM932 with all the addons.
 
srfallsallot said:
I have been gifted a Logan 9" with the quick change gearbox and lots of tooling. My friend has not used it in quite a while. He has a very nice machine shop at home. He says it is in excellent shape. I have been to his place and it is extremely well kept. For free what can I say. He is lending me a trailer and engine hoist to move it. I have been wanting a lathe for several years and I keep procrastinating. No excuse now. I now have to figure out what to make with it. I have a PM932 with all the addons.
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Run, don't walk. You have a very NICE friend there!
 
Nochain said:
That’s the common answer but nobody says why. I am more inclined for a mill but when I get one or the other I know Ill be like darn I need the other machine to complete my task.
Didn’t the old WW2 submarines have lathes on them? With spinning gear that makes sense. Plus they didn’t have bench top mills back then…
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What they did have back then was combination machines that combined such as lathe, mill, and shaper, good for small ships where space was at a premium.
 
Ask yourself what machining operation you wanted to do in the last couple years and didn't have the machine to do it- That might help you decide.
There are some things you just can't do without a lathe though. Even a worn out 6" Atlas is better than nothing
Avoid the combo machines- they make poor mills and only passable lathes
 
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The best answer is to figure out your next 4, 5, 10 projects - however far you can look ahead, and buy for those.

Lacking that- the lathe. In a huge number of cases you can do "milling" operations on the lathe, especially if you have a milling attachment. With your lathe, get a copy of Sparey's "The Amateur's Lathe" - it covers a lot of operations involving using the lathe for what would normally be considered mill work. There's a reason it's called "The Queen of machine tools".

Someone using their mill twice as much as a lathe is meaningless - that's because they have both. The real question is which one can you least do without? In my case, and probably in general (as if any of us are 'general'), I think it's the lathe.

GsT
 
If you're the kind of person who makes and builds a lot of stuff then you will need both
If you wait for good deals you can get both for less than 2 grand. I did. They aren't Cadillacs but they work
 
Nochain said:
What should be my first machine? I really want both but I don’t have enough. so the question is which one should I get first? I know you’ll ask but what do I need to make? What do I need it for etc. etc. the answer is I needed to make parts for the other machine lol I’m just trying to understand the rationale you guys have to help me make my decision.
My hobbies include automotive restoration, RC planes, motorcycles, metalwork fabrication. I have experience on both machines and not new to trade. Thanks in advance for your input. I have limited space and no one to help me so my plan would be benchtop machines only.
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It best for lathe first.
You can do some milling on a lathe.

Dave
 
I bought my 7x12 mini-lathe long before I bought my mill. I learned a lot about precision machining with it, which has translated well to my mill. I made a lot of stuff with just the lathe, a drill press and hand tools.

Having both, now I wouldn't want to give up either one. Some jobs are just easier or faster to do on one vs. the other. Plus, sometimes It's nice to have the other so you don't have to tear down a setup to do something else. Some times it's related to the main project (as in, "oops, now what do I do?!"). That turned out to be the case when I was replacing the spindle bearings on my lathe. I belatedly discovered that my bearing pulling setup wasn't cutting it....so I used my rotary table on the mill to make some beefier spacers for the job.
 
A question like this could probably best be answered by the previous generation of model makers and hobby engineers, for whom the milling machine was not yet an option. Then again, maybe that’s why they all had lathes. No choice.
But turning the question around and asking myself “if I could only keep one, what would I do?”, the answer is obviously to keep the lathe. But funny enough, I have a machinist friend who would say exactly the opposite. Haha!
 
I'm doing HO scale steam locomotive scratchbuilding, and I needed a mill for the immediate work. Later though, I'd like to try my hand at turning wheels, so eventually I want a lathe. What I ended up doing was getting a 8" Sherline manual lathe with a mill column attachment, their 30%-off offer pushed me over the edge. I'm just making small brass parts, so the lathe/mill conversion works just fine and only takes about 20 seconds.

In model railroading, a mill gets more use than a lathe. Generally, I think you need to look at the sort of machining you're most likely to do...
 
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