That's funny, for some reason I replied to this question with a PM to you instead of right here. Scatter brained today. One of my favorite things right out of the gate with the PM-833TV was the fact it was a bed style mill v's a knee mill. I knew there would be some different machining techniques to learn compared to my knee mill experience and I was looking forward to that. At the shop I worked at depth of cut was done mostly by adjusting the knee on the Bridgeport. On the 833 I've been using the fine feed adjustment for the quill on the few projects I've done so far. It works just fine but I found that it loses a bit of accuracy after a few turns when comparing it to a quality dial indicator. So one of my future projects will be a DRO either for the quill or the Z axis. I'm going to try using the Z axis hand wheel for depth of cut adjustments on my next project. There's hardly any backlash at all with the Z axis. There's a few things missing on the 833TV that can easily be corrected. One is the fact that there's no power switch which means the VFD is active until you unplug the machine from the wall or flip the breaker off like I have been doing. I have a properly rated wall switch on the way that I will wire into the 30 amp circuit for the machine to remedy this. There's also the fact that there's no way to tighten the draw bar right out of the box. I ended up using a cordless Rigid impact gun for this task which works quite well. I later received from PM a wrench and a machined ring that attaches to the spindle with flats that works well for tightening the draw bar. This is really no big deal for me because I was already planning on a PDB install at some point. But for those not expecting the lack of a way to tighten the draw bar after setting it up......it comes as quite a surprise. I love the simplicity of the belt driven spindle and the variable speed control. This was one of the major things that made me decide on the 833 over the J-Head on the 835S. Back when I ran Bridgeport mills we had a maintenance guy that did all repairs to the machinery so I was never involved in that area. But, since I was going to be the owner of the mill now I knew I'd be doing any future repairs. So I thoroughly researched the inner workings of the J-head and was a little leery of the multitude of working parts it took to achieve what the 833 does with such simplicity. This and the fact I've talked to owners of the PM knee mills and their woes steered me towards the 833. I too was a little concerned about the Chinese lower body of the 835S. I'm not trying to knock the PM knee mills at all. There's good and bad with any mill choice you make. I'd actually love to see one of the PM knee mills in person........better yet do some machining on one. Deciding on which mill to get takes time and research. Hope this helps!
