Do I Sell My Rf-30 For A Grizzly 704 Style?

[intjonmiller]

I love seeing when they copy things incorrectly because they don't understand how to use them, like the rip graduations on a Harbor Freight speed square that are on the wrong leg, making them useless for ripping.

 

[JimDawson]

I've read a number of comments where people say that their radial drill presses were a waste of money because they never use that feature, but I imagine that could have been part of the goal?? The main benefits of RADs is that they allow you to work on pieces too large to fit between the drill and the table, and the head rotates in two axes for compound angle drilling. It seems to me that all the round column mills I've seen don't benefit from either of those functions.

I suggest that the small RADs were a marketing feature rather than a real functional machine. Consider that a real RAD is a 5K to 10K pound machine with a column a foot or so in diameter. Some things just don't scale very well.

 

[owl]

I own a round column mill, and have found three issues with it, the first has been mentioned, raising and lowering the head generally causes loss of position, second, under heavy load, the head can slip around the column (changing the clamp bolts to fine thread, with their higher clamping force has all but eliminated that concern on mine), and third, the head can't be tilted to mill grooves with the edge of an end mill (although generally the work can be tilted instead). There are a couple of small advantages, though. First, in drilling you can leave the head loose, and make minor adjustments to where your drill lands (not a big use, but sometimes useful). Second, the base can be bolted to the bench and the head swiveled to allow work on the floor below to be drilled, when it would be otherwise too big to handle. All in all, if I could swap even for a square mill of the same size and capacity, I probably would, but it would certainly be no priority.

 

[mikey]

true, but I think are larger part of it is that was how the tool they copied was built (which I don't think was ever intended to be a mill). You can see that in the mini lathe and it's larger counterparts, all copies of Emco lathes - Emco 5 = 7x10, Emco 8 = 9x20, Emco 10 = ?. The copiers also copied various quirks in the original designs

I think Matt is dead on the money here. Asian copies reproduce design flaws, down to the plastic gears found on the originals. Oh, and the Emco Super 11 was copied into the Sieg SC8.

Round column mill drills are heavy duty drill presses and light duty mills. They typically weigh 650-750# so they're fairly stout for what they are. I was just given (as in totally free) an RF-31 that was originally used for drilling bowling balls and that sucker will put a 1" carbide-tipped spade drill through a bowling ball with almost no effort; try that with most modern hobby class mills and see how it works. When used as a heavy drill press with a 5" stroke and about 18" of headroom they are very good machines. When used as a mill they are less convenient but they still do a fairly good job of it - I've used an RF-31 before so I'm not totally unfamiliar with these machines.

With that said, if I were to spend money on a mill today I would buy a square column knee mill, no doubt about it.

 

[Bill Gruby]

Why would you take the time to clean and repair something, then sell it before you gave it a chance to prove itself?? I believe that is the original post content. I know lots of home hobby people that are happy with their round column mill drills. Give it a try for a while. My Grandfather used to say the grass is only greener on the other side of the fence because you don't groom your own. No matter what type of machine it is, it is only as good as the person operating it.

Mikey, what is a square column knee-mill? Knee Mills have tables the move on the Z axis and the heads are attached to Rams and non movable, only the spindle moves on the Z axis. There is no need for a column.Maybe I missed something.

"Billy G"

 

[stupoty]

2 things I'd guess - first is that they're a copy of a variable speed heavy duty drill press/ light duty mill made by Clausing in the 80s. As most of the Chinese/ Taiwanese machines originally were copies of EU/US machines, I'd imagine that they just took the design, put in some pulleys instead of the variable speed stuff, and then sold them as is.
Second, fewer precision surfaces = cheaper. Also, I'd imagine a piece of pipe is cheaper than a somewhat complex cast square column shape

The round coloum is a cast peice on my rf25 size mill, it's pritty heavey. As you say turning a round thing on a lathe has got to be a cheeper manufacturing process than making a dovetail way.

Sturt

 

[mikey]

My mistake. I intended to put an "or" between square column and knee.

 

[Fishwater]

I've decided to keep it since other hobbies have taken a priority for the last few weeks & it doesn't make sense to invest in something else. I was only looking for something else because I would have appreciated the space savings in the shop but at the end of the day the expense wasn't something I could justify.