I'd say that the coaxial indicator is more of a luxury than a necessity and that money would be better spent this early in the game on more basic needs. You will need an edge finder, for one thing.
You will need some way to hold an indicator, usually a DTI, in the spindle for sweeping round parts, or finding center of holes, indicating a vise in, etc.
I forgot parallels sized to fit your vise.
Totally agree, the coax indicator is a luxury & depending on what you will do it may not get used very much, mine doesn't. You certainly can get by without it & use a DTI or wiggler. I only got the Blake cause I scored a fair deal on a new one & have been regreting missing out on great deal for a Blake from a local retired machinist.
The Noga NF1018 indicator holder I got is also a luxury item IMO although Indicols cost about the same which I personally did not like much. I love my Noga mag base holders so I got the Noga indicator holder. The Noga is nice cause it's versatile, it's very maneuverable & locks up solid so it can be used for may applications. The import versions don't lock up as well. I got mine from
Salvage Island. But keep in mind the shank is 8mm, you can squeeze it into a 5/16 collet but I did not like that & bought a 8mm R8 collet specifically for it. If you have a lathe you can easily make a DTI holder for tramming & realisticly you can mount the DTI directly in the spindle for indicating the vise.
I would say that I tooled up my mill pretty fast, many items I went with luxury products, some items are luxuries that aren't necesasarily needed for starting out (depending on what you plan to do). But I was set on what I wanted & knew exactly what I wanted.
Edge finders & parallels are necessities. For edge finders I did not buy a luxury Starrett set. I went with PEC which are low budget but made in the US. Probably not nearly as nice as Starrets or Mitus but they work great for me. I got mine
thetaylormk. They also sell PEC squares which are nice enough IMO. Enco almost always has Fowler and/or SPI edge finders on sale for about the same price & with this weeks deal you can get a better deal on a set.
Parallels I just went with an inexpensive import set from
allindustrialtoolsupply. You can probably find them cheaper but they were close to me & I got them the next day. 1/8"s are good for starters.
If you want to save a little money, I would say a 4" vise is good enough but I haven't used my 4" vise yet so not 100% on that. I say this cause last week I found out the limit of the Y axis which the capacity of my 5" vise exceeded. I had a 9" tooling plate mounted in the vise & in the y axis I was not able to mill the full length of it. There are other reasons the bigger vise will benefit but knowing that I would still have choose the 5". Those 6" Kurts are nice & I'd love to have one but IMHO it's really overkill for the RF-45. I think of a mill vise as a lathe chuck or QCTP. I personally did not want to "cheap out" on these items & got the nicest I could afford. But that's just my preference & that doesn't mean less expensive items can't do the job just fine. I just pick & choose what items I prefer to pay more for.
Of course a vise for a mill is definitely a necessity but in my case a super spacer will see much more table time than a vise. But i wasn't able to buy somthing real nice for the SS since they are not cheap. I went with a 6.5" because of the weight (80 lbs vs 165lbs for the 8"). Cheapest I found was $365 & $66 for the matching tailstock from
utoole.com. Made by Universal which is one of the most common suppliers of import chucks & looks identical to the Phase II units. Like the Phase II it still needed some deburring but came out working smooth after spending a couple hours on it.
If you do ebay (I know some people hate ebay), then that will save a lot on your wallet. My test & dial indicators are Mitus scored for very low prices on ebay. 95% of my measuring tools are Mitutoyo (I'm a big Mitu fan) scored for fractions of what they cost new on ebay & in many cases were practically new in condition. Just recently scored a 2" Criterion boring head for $100 & a 3" Yuasa boring head for $125 (although the 3" will probably rarely get used).
I've babbled on too long already. I'm no seasoned machinist like many others here but I know & have done enough to be dangerous & keep my bank account low. I'm happy to chat with you if you have questions, just PM me anytime.
