First machine Lathe or Mill?

[RaisedByWolves]

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…

So here it is:

Commonality of repairs. You're not going to start out on a lathe making a crankshaft, just like you're not going to start out on a mill making an engine block.

Most people will have as their first "Real project" a repair of something that has rotating parts, and many things have rotating shafts. Simple shafts are easy to make and simple to repair along with the required bushings to go with them.

Then there's tooling. You will only spend 1/4 as much to fully outfit a lathe as you will with a mill. Easier to get into means more long term satisfaction and the more likely you will stick with it.

Measuring tools and your work/skill progression. As mentioned, a mill will cost more to outfit, but you need measuring tools for whichever you choose. Starting with a machine that is relatively inexpensive to outfit will leave funds for measuring tools and other tools. Once you have the lathe fitted and your measuring tools, much of that will cross over to the mill thereby making it cheaper to outfit it at that time.

Then there's the wife factor. No one lives in a vacuum, so once you can show that your new "TOYS" are beneficial to the household, it will make the outlay for a decent mill more appealing to the spousal unit/SWMBO/family accountant.

The lathe, while more dangerous is also more forgiving on mishandling tooling. You will get tired of sharpening a HSS toolbit long before you feel the effects of your mistakes on your wallet. With a mill you're talking endmills and other consumables that you will not (at least initially) be able to sharpen, so cost wise, its much more economical to regrind a $10 tool bit a dozen times than it is to dull/chip/break a single $20 endmill.

And you will need to have many different size endmills, any one of which will burn up in a heartbeat when first learning. You will learn how different metals react with a lathe which will help lessen the ruination of expensive endmills when the time comes.

Hope this helps.

 

[wachuko]

In my case, like you, I wanted both... but the need to machine a brake caliper made it so that I got the milling machine first.

If you do not have a particular project in mind that would dictate what to get first, I suggest getting the lathe first.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

The old saying is that a lathe, with all its attachments, could build a lathe.
A mill, with all its attachments, could duplicate itself - and make a lathe.
There is such a thing as having an affinity for one machine or another.
I know myself to have a much better feel or instinct for what a lathe is doing than I do for a mill.
Some guys are opposite.
Of course you won't know your own affinity till you have run both.
Getting back to your question tho, if your intent in your shop is to involve welding and making parts to weld together to make a machine then a mill may be your better choice.

I think you have this a little askew.


There's no making a quill for a mill on a mill, nor the screws necessary to move the X/Y.

The lathe is the only machine that can duplicate itself, being borne out by it being the first machine tool ever invented and duplicated, with each iteration being better and more accurate than the last.

Lathes were old tech while blacksmiths were still beating steel into shapes with hammers.

 

[Aaron_W]

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...

As combos go, Sherline is a good choice, size permitting. The milling column is very much like the milling option for the Emco Unimat and Compact 5.

Like those you can later upgrade to a full mill since the milling column is just the mill without the base and head and those can be bought separately converting the column into a full mill.

Not as convieniant as having a lathe and mill but a fairly inexpensive way to get the features of both machines. I think you will find that to work well for your model RR work.

 

[ggbutcher]

Size was also a consideration. My office/shop is all of 7'x10' in the corner of the basement. The lathe/mill on it's mounting board sits on a bookshelf for storage, and I move it about 2 feet to the desk/workbench for use.

 

[wrmiller]

My pistolsmithing mentor kept telling me I needed to get a lathe. The lathe is much more versatile, it can do more, yadda, yadda, yadda.

So finally, I asked him why he uses his mill daily, sometimes all day, and only powers up his lathe once every week or two?

He stopped telling me I needed a lathe....

Moral of the story is it depends on what you need/want to do, and then choose accordingly.

 

[keeena]

I'm in the lathe camp.

I think there's something a bit more intuitive with machining on a lathe and I think the process & theory is a bit easier to understand. My more common quickie projects are mostly turning items: bolts, soft-tip set screws, opening IDs, washers/spacers...that sort of thing

 

[rodm1]

Realistically a Lathe but for some reason I ended up with 4 lathes and one small mill. I think it's do to most people not having a use for a lathe and a mill looks strangle like a drill press. My vote is Mill and hope a lathe finds you soon.

You can turn on a mill just not as easy of a job.

P.S. Get a forklift if you are entering this hobby!

 

[Ultradog MN]

I think you have this a little askew.


There's no making a quill for a mill on a mill, nor the screws necessary to move the X/Y.

The lathe is the only machine that can duplicate itself, being borne out by it being the first machine tool ever invented and duplicated, with each iteration being better and more accurate than the last.

Lathes were old tech while blacksmiths were still beating steel into shapes with hammers.

Dunno.
It's what they told us in Navy machinist school in 1971.
But we were still learning on horizontal mills then.
I never saw a vertical mill till I got to The Fleet.
Navy lore and old wive's tales may be more closely intermixed than I realized but something makes me continue to believe it.

 

[C-Bag]

In hindsight I don’t think there is a strictly logical way to figure this out as it’s like Dave said “chicken or the egg”. I say this because one of the major considerations when I had enough experience to understand was it always seems to take the lathe to fix the lathe. So logically you need two if you’re going to make parts for it. I’ve not had any situations like that with the mill so far.