Welder looking to buy a mill/drill for home use

matthewsx said:
An RF45 as suggested above would be a good choice, but not getting to his door with tooling under $5k new...As a former business owner I'm all to familiar with trying to balance wants and "needs".
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^^^ agree and agree.

I was in the same boat earlier this year. I needed a mill mostly to accurately drill and tap holes, and for some light surfacing/squaring up stock. I ended up going with a Grizzly G0761 square column mill with tapping. Currently on sale for $2,975 which is even $300 less than the sales price I paid. A good quality R8 drill chuck, face mill, ER32 collet chuck, collets and a DRO and I was in business well below a knee mill price or footprint while also avoiding the hassle of a round column mill.
 
Pretty nice but I’m thinking we still don’t know how big an area you will need to mill flat. If you don’t want to say that’s cool but just say so.

For the record I’m a home biz owner. That’s why I bought my 9x20 lathe and RF30 used. Combined for less than $1200 total. I needed to build my own machines to form and infrastructure to powder coat my product. I decided I didn’t want to farm out the machining. Probably the best decision I ever made. I knew my projected needs and could have gotten by probably with mini lathe and mill but opted for the next size up. And as fate would have it both machines popped up on Craigslist.
 
The longest piece of stock ill need to surface is roughly 14-17 inches long
 
I owned a RF-31 for several years and did good work on it, but I wouldn't consider it for production work if facing plate is what you intend to do. It's a great drilling, slotting, and profiling tool if you're on a budget. It faces fine for a one-off here and there, but facing is, in my opinion, something that requires a knee or heavy duty quill with precise, graduated downfeed if you are trying to get a spec finished thickness. And 14-17 inches really works out to 16" base width plus 17" part plus 2x 3" face mill (full tool diameter clearance on both sides of the part being faced) = 39 inches inches of table of so you're in Bridgeport territory.

Some of the light non-knee type mills like the RF45 and square-head Encos have plastic gears in the head, not good for fly cutting or heavy facing work due to the beating those tools send through the drive system. So look out for that. It might be best to just run a circuit and get a more production worthy tool. Used knee mills are within your budget, especially in your neck of the woods.

Does Teg= Integra?
 
pontiac428 said:
I owned a RF-31 for several years and did good work on it, but I wouldn't consider it for production work if facing plate is what you intend to do. It's a great drilling, slotting, and profiling tool if you're on a budget. It faces fine for a one-off here and there, but facing is, in my opinion, something that requires a knee or heavy duty quill with precise, graduated downfeed if you are trying to get a spec finished thickness. And 14-17 inches really works out to 16" base width plus 17" part plus 2x 3" face mill (full tool diameter clearance on both sides of the part being faced) = 39 inches inches of table of so you're in Bridgeport territory.

Some of the light non-knee type mills like the RF45 and square-head Encos have plastic gears in the head, not good for fly cutting or heavy facing work due to the beating those tools send through the drive system. So look out for that. It might be best to just run a circuit and get a more production worthy tool. Used knee mills are within your budget, especially in your neck of the woods.

Does Teg= Integra?
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Yes sir
 
Everyone,

Thank you for taking the time to comment. A couple things, I'm not looking to buy a bridgeport or anything with that large of a footprint/weight. I also need something that can plug into the wall(110v) no exceptions. I prefer to buy something new, I can't afford to get something used and have any issues with it.

Thank you and look forward to your suggestions.
 
The biggest 110v square column bench mill PM sells at 110v advertises a 16" X axis, though I'm not sure how much of that is truly useable. At 1.5 hp, it can face steel with a reasonable cutter, depth, and rates. Facing is best with a power feed, and you will need a DRO for the quill to control your finished part thickness dimensions. Since we don't know specifics, it's hard to say whether the work envelope of these machines are truly suitable for what you're doing, but maybe. The price seems right, anyway.

 
Im cutting roughly .040-.080" off to flatten these (what will be fixture plates). Im not "hogging" out large amounts of material. Simply truing up carbon steel plates
 
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