Mills for Gunsmiths

[MC]

My budget isn't absolutely firm and I am going to give Precision Matthews a call as well to get their suggestions. I am curious about the X-powerfeed and its advantages other than needing to turn the wheel myself. I saw a reference in a post that the cut was cleaner with a powerfeed but is seems like just turning the wheel myself could be plenty smooth. Disabuse me of this if I'm not thinking about this right. In wood you mostly worry about burning by going too slow and rough cuts because you go too fast. I'd guess you could get metal too hot but the vise/milling process seems like the biggest mistakes you could make would be taking too much of a cut or too fast.

I very much appreciate all of your advice and thoughts on this. I've been reading and rereading this thread trying to extract all of the advice .

Mike

 

[Hozzie]

If you want any type of really good finish, you will need an x power feed. For me it isn’t really even an option not to have it.

 

[wrmiller]

My budget isn't absolutely firm and I am going to give Precision Matthews a call as well to get their suggestions. I am curious about the X-powerfeed and its advantages other than needing to turn the wheel myself. I saw a reference in a post that the cut was cleaner with a powerfeed but is seems like just turning the wheel myself could be plenty smooth. Disabuse me of this if I'm not thinking about this right. In wood you mostly worry about burning by going too slow and rough cuts because you go too fast. I'd guess you could get metal too hot but the vise/milling process seems like the biggest mistakes you could make would be taking too much of a cut or too fast.

I very much appreciate all of your advice and thoughts on this. I've been reading and rereading this thread trying to extract all of the advice .

Mike

I very seldom leave a machined finish on any gun parts. They are mostly sanded/ground/bead blasted after machining to eliminate tooling marks. Having said that though, a power feed on the x-axis will come in handy when making final passes on cuts as the smoother finish leaves less hand work. I will admit that I got pretty good as a human-powered power feed though. The x-axis power feed was the lowest priority for me. Again, this is just my opinion, but I find a power feed on the head/knee (Z-axis) more helpful, but then I'm not doing real long cuts on my mill except when making jigs and stuff. But I am moving the head/knee up and down a lot, depending on what I am doing.

There are no wrong answers here, from anyone. Only choices. Folks here, including myself, can only answer questions and make suggestions based on our experiences. The final decision is yours and needs to fit your needs.

I find my setup of the PM935T and the 1340GT to be a very good choice for pistolsmithing/gunsmithing. But I won't bother you with the number and variety of machines I had to go through to get here. Now if Matt at PM would have been nice enough to have that little 833 available back when I was looking to upgrade, I probably would still have it. But I'm happy with my stuff. After recovering from blowing my original budget to heck and gone...

 

[MC]

Still have to make the call to Matt but I'm leaning very heavily to the loaded 932. It's going to stretch the budget out over 4K when all is said and done but seems like a lot of capability for the money. The 833T is appealing but really blows the budget up considering there's a lot of tooling and measurement accessories to add as well. Just can't tell the wife I spent that much money on a hobby I'm starting at this point.

Thank you all for the thoughts, reasoning, information and ideas. It did encourage me to look a little higher than I was planning but I think that's a good thing.

 

[MC]

It's been quite a while because work definitely was getting in the way but pays for these things. I pulled the trigger on a 833T yesterday to ship sometime in August. Went with the 3 axis DRO and X powerfeed along with accessories (4" homge, etc.) Looking forward to making some chips. Blew the budget but on the other hand it's why I work my tail off. Only live once.

 

[MC]

Supposed to be here Monday which is longer than I expected but on the other hand I just finished up with high school football last Friday so I didn't miss much. Hoping the liftgate truck will go down the driveway and is able to drop it right in the shop. It will probably not get much of a run until Thanksgiving week but it will finally be her.

 

[Eddyde]

Looks like an awesome mill, please be sure to post pics when you get it set up
Enjoy!