I have $1000 to spend, which mini-mill do I buy?

HMF

HMF

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You have $1000 ONLY to spend on a mini-mill.

Which one do you buy?

Opinions please?

Thanks!


Nelson
 
I wish I knew where to pick up a x2d without waiting months. Hopefully the answer lies within. Wish me luck on my quest
 
The 1k price point is challenging, as you care on the cusp of getting better features for only 1 or 2 hundred dollars more.

For example, at 1100 bucks, you can get the micro-mark 84630 microlux which has an industry-standard R8 spindle.
It has a half-horse motor, variable speed, square column, it is true inch, as versus metric threads... etc. Shipping ($90) to your location
is pretty reasonable.

Little Machine Shop does have an X2d model ($750), with an r8 spindle which will be in stock in about 1 month. Keep in mind you must include
shipping costs in your calculation ($195).

Precision Matthews enters the game at a much higher price point ($1700 plus shipping) for the PM-25.

Now for the bad news, the tooling which you must add to make any mill useful, will often set you back another 500 to 700 dollars.

I recently bought a milling machine in a higher budget range, I like to equip my toys pretty seriously (things like X-axis power feed, Digital 3-axis
read out, multiple cutters, stout vise, etc), I probably have over 2k bucks in JUST add-ons.
 
You realize that the $1000 in the OP are 2011 dollars, right? ;)

Tom
 
Yes I’m thinking a grizzly g0704 or pm-25mv and convert to cnc. So forget the $1k budget. The tools are always a stack of money. I’ve learned that the money saved on doing stuff yourself more than pays for the tools and you’ll have many of them for years to come. The initial cost is behind you and the savings from then on add up. Like the old saying goes, a penny saved is a penny earned. If anyone has experience with the grizzly or precision Mathews let me know what you think and if you converted to cnc was there any problems.
 
I started on a G0704 and liked it but wanted more Z height and also wanted to move to CNC so I sold my G0704 and bought a PM45M-CNC. Physical workmanship on both were great as far as I can tell. the G0704 burned out a control board a couple of times and the PM45CNC system had a poor quality Motion controller that was easily replaced with a better quality. to summarize, both are/were great but not perfect and my friend that I sold the G0704 to has just completed a CNC conversion on it and seems happy with it.
 
Boswell said:
I started on a G0704 and liked it but wanted more Z height and also wanted to move to CNC so I sold my G0704 and bought a PM45M-CNC. Physical workmanship on both were great as far as I can tell. the G0704 burned out a control board a couple of times and the PM45CNC system had a poor quality Motion controller that was easily replaced with a better quality. to summarize, both are/were great but not perfect and my friend that I sold the G0704 to has just completed a CNC conversion on it and seems happy with it.
Click to expand...
I ended up going with a pm-25mv. It was back ordered and won’t be here for a few weeks. I went ahead and ordered the cnc conversion kit and look forward to getting it up and making chips.
 
Good choice. That's the same path I went on. I'm very happy with the PM-25MV and my CNC conversion.

I use LinuxCNC with a parallel port motherboard. I started with Fusion360, but switched to FreeCAD.
 
The Founder of Hobby-Machinist posted a question and it took 9 years for first reply!
 
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