info and opinions of small mills needed. . please ?

davidh

davidh

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i sold my bridgeport and now im shopping for a new, smaller milling machine. my eyes are hurting and my brain fried, trying to ompare the different ones. i have not checked but grizzly and PM so other brand ideas would be very welcome.

also opinions of round column vrs dovetail columns. im not interested in digital speed readout, been without it forever, and never had power down either. so i would not miss either one.

belt speed changes are ok, r-8 is a no brainer, i have a set of collets. . . .

i suppose that about 2 grand would be about max so that limits it a bit. a bench top with or without a stand is good and i suppose things would be less expensive if i made a heavy duty stand myself. . . like the one i made for my lathe that works great.

this is more frustrating than shopping for a car. . . . .

can any of you offer some help here ? please, i really need it
 
how small are you looking to go? what i the work envelope that you would like to have?

you can go to the clausing and replicas which are smaller versions of the bridgeport with similar features (knee, belts, etc), or can go with the asian benchtops like the Seig (S)X3 in different colors (depending who you are buying it from), or the RF models... all of these have roughly the same work envelope give or take a few inches here or there.

Or you could go real small and go for the X2 benchtop size mills.

there are lots of options out there, but instead of listing all the options and choosing one - I would recommend listing all your "wanted" features and find out which mills has most (if not all) of those - and choose from that list. that would be easier and how I would go about it
 
I've owned a Grizzly mill/drill for maybe 20 years and am happy with it. That's partly because I have a real mill when I need it, but since that has no quill feed, I used the Grizzly today for some drilling and reaming.
 
I wish I could find a decent Rockwell model 21-122.

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the ones i have checked out as being substantial are the GO463 or GO705 by grizzly or the PM25 or PM30 from Precissioin Matthews. I have not really checked any others yet as my brain cannot remember their names. . . but the above models are about the right size i think. . .
 
Alan Douglas said:
I've owned a Grizzly mill/drill for maybe 20 years and am happy with it. That's partly because I have a real mill when I need it, but since that has no quill feed, I used the Grizzly today for some drilling and reaming.
Click to expand...

is yours of the current offerings from grizzly ?
 
It looks like the 1005 model on their site now.

One drawback I've found: if you need to raise the head, say to install a reamer, you lose your position, with the round column. Usually it's possible to plan in advance.
 
Does a round column or dovetail column have advantage as far as ability to tram properly or easily ?
 
davidh said:
Does a round column or dovetail column have advantage as far as ability to tram properly or easily ?
Click to expand...

You can't tram either style fore and aft since the head is fixed. Also you can't tram a round column head in either direction.

With a rectangular column you can usually tram left and right.
 
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