Craftsman Mill/Drill

[bug_hunter]

Evening,

Can anyone give me their thoughts on the quality, usefulness, and value of a Model 351.211970 mill/drill to a hobbyist? looks newish (not an antique, probably 1980's). Has a three-directions DRO, vise, collets and Jacobs chuck. Not sure about end mills, hold-downs or other tooling. Not in the market currently, but a small mill might be nice once I learn how to use my South Bend 9.

Any insight, opinions, or information would be appreciated.

Greg

 

[Ulma Doctor]

mill/drill can be very useful dependent on the scope of work you intend to do
if you do small work, you may never need anything larger
being a round column mill, you may have issues with tramming if you move the head often

if the price is right and you have a desire to get it, then do it!!!

 

[Aaron_W]

I found the manual available from Sears. From the drawing on the cover I assume it is related to one of the Rong Fu round column mills. The table is 9x31" so probably very similar to the RF-31. The date on the manual is 2007, so that may be a fairly recent machine. The 351. in the model number would make the supplier Colovos Co, of Chicago but they were most likely just the importer providing them to Sears.

There are quite a few posters here who have similar mill / drills. Not large compared to something like a Bridgeport but that is a pretty decent size machine, 700-800lbs.



You can download the manual here

 

[C-Bag]

Never heard of this particular mill drill before. Overall it looks a lot like the Rong Fu RF30/31. I’ve had my RF30 7-8yrs now. I purposely went this route because I didn’t really have the room for a Bridgeport and wasn’t sure if I needed something that big. I figured a mini mill I would outgrow quickly and this popped up on CL. There have been many discussions on the shortcomings of the design like keeping register if you have raise or lower the head during a project and the lack of a knee can cause a lack of rigidity. These are all things I took into consideration and once known can be overcome.

I would be leery of this particular Craftsman machine as it might not be a purely rebadged RF so parts might be hard to find.

 

[wa5cab]

The potential problem of repair parts availability should be fairly easy to determine. In the case of the Atlas built 6" and 12" lathes, Sears did not make up their own part numbers but used those set up by Atlas. They obviously did not advertise this but if you needed a part back when Sears was still selling items built by Atlas, you could actually get the part from either Sears or from what has become Clausing, and to a degree, still can.

We don't that I know of have any Sears machine metal working machine manuals for anything sold by Sears but not made by Atlas or Clausing. I would have no objection if someone wanted to upload one or more. But if anyone does, let me know first so that I can set up a folder for them.

Back to the parts availability question at hand, download the Sears manual and the Rong Fu manual for the model that you think matches it and compare the parts lists. If Sears used the Rong Fu part numbers, then parts availability is apt to be much better than if they didn't.