looking, reading and watching youtube. seems like there are several mini mills out there but most are made very similar and made by the same Chinese co. im thinking the harbor freight mill is the best price. any comments welcomed. thanks
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Which Mini Mill ???
- Thread starter bubbas55
- Start date
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2013
- Messages
- 176
I have the Harbor Freight mini mill and have had no problems with it. It did arrive loose and greasy, but was easy to assemble and adjust. There is a lot of information on the web on how to set these little machines up. And occasional horror stories. I filled the base of the column with epoxy, since it just seemed like a good idea. I also got a belt drive kit, again because it just made sense. The fine Z-axis feed is not the best but the web is filled with work-arounds and solutions. It's done everything I've needed it to do. Wait for a sale and a 20 or 25% off coupon and you have a very inexpensive mill and a damn fine drill press. The other X-2s out there don't seem to have enough improvements to justify the price increase over the dirt cheap HF machine. The rigid column mill from Little Machine Shop could have some advantages, but I use the tilt column more than I thought. It's a hobby machine so it's always being used in ways a commercial machine never would be.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2014
- Messages
- 658
Depends on how much clean up and the like you want to do.
The Chinese mini-mills should all be considered as kits.
Sieg will make these to about any standard the distributer wants. The HF one is just the basic mill they make, the LMS one has options and some better parts.
There are some major design flaws in the Sieg mill, and hundreds if not thousands of internet posts on how to correct them.
With enough time, effort and money, they can be turned into very quality machines. I would argue that it is better to start with a quality machine though, but budgets dictate results. No matter what though, you will still have a mini-mill at the end of the day.
You might want to have a look at the mills from Quality Machine Tools. Matt is a favorite around here, and many of us own his machines. You will be very hard pressed to find better service, and his machines are all made to his specs and reflect the needs of a machinist rather than an accountant. His prices are also very competitive when you compare apples to apples.
The Chinese mini-mills should all be considered as kits.
Sieg will make these to about any standard the distributer wants. The HF one is just the basic mill they make, the LMS one has options and some better parts.
There are some major design flaws in the Sieg mill, and hundreds if not thousands of internet posts on how to correct them.
With enough time, effort and money, they can be turned into very quality machines. I would argue that it is better to start with a quality machine though, but budgets dictate results. No matter what though, you will still have a mini-mill at the end of the day.
You might want to have a look at the mills from Quality Machine Tools. Matt is a favorite around here, and many of us own his machines. You will be very hard pressed to find better service, and his machines are all made to his specs and reflect the needs of a machinist rather than an accountant. His prices are also very competitive when you compare apples to apples.
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2013
- Messages
- 1,020
When I started looking for a small used lathe a few years back, I finally found a guy who had a G0602 for sale that had been well cared for and had a bunch of extras tossed in.
When I told my better half about to, she jumped on the idea and immediately called my son in law who had a Honda mini van, to ask if we could use it for a "vacation".
The lathe was 3 states away, these are western states, not those little things that you guys on the other side of the country call states. I sent the guy a down payment so he would
hold the lathe till our little vacation finally made it up to his house. We had a great time! When I got to his house, he had everything ready to roll right into the side of the van.
The "extras" were plentiful, and ended up including a G8689 mini mill along with boxes of lathe cutters and end mills, vices, rotary table, three chucks including collets, VFD for the 3 phase motor he had added to the lathe, and lots and lots of extraneous tools. It ended up being over 1200# of stuff. We than continued our vacation taking care to avoid rough dirt roads, poor old van. We even drove through the big redwood tree with the tunnel through it, after folding in the rear view mirrors. How many lathes have done that!?
When we got home three and a half weeks had gone by and it took me another week just to get all the stuff down the stairs to my little basement bedroom shop. Getting the "lathe" ended up with being much much more stuff than we ever anticipated, all for about the price of a new lathe delivered, but the extras, oh the extras! Plus the vacation!
To make a long story short ;-) and more to the point. The lathe gets used a lot as of late, and the unexpected little milling machine gets a bunch of use also. If I had my drothers, I would prefer to have a couple of sizes larger milling machine. My biggest gripe is that the table travel is, to me, ridiculously small. I needed to mill the outer perimeter of an out of square chunk of 3/4" thick by 4.5" by 5.5" mild steel and I had to do a complete setup for each of the four sides. The milling went quick, what took forever was the set up time for each one of the sides individually. I do love the little thing for very accurate drilling and positioning holes and tapping. You can get precision out of the little fellow if you take a lot of time and work hard enough. It all ends up with what you want to use it for, and if you are anything like me (heavens forbid) you don't know exactly what you will be using it for. If I had to do with either the lathe or the mill, I would choose the lathe, but then I work on telescopes which are round in nature and benefit from a machine that can do round stuff. A milling machine is one of the few machines out there that can essentially make another copy of itself, not so much with a lathe. Good luck with whatever decision you make, and keep us informed of what you decide, and how it goes.
CHuck the grumpy old guy
When I told my better half about to, she jumped on the idea and immediately called my son in law who had a Honda mini van, to ask if we could use it for a "vacation".
The lathe was 3 states away, these are western states, not those little things that you guys on the other side of the country call states. I sent the guy a down payment so he would
hold the lathe till our little vacation finally made it up to his house. We had a great time! When I got to his house, he had everything ready to roll right into the side of the van.
The "extras" were plentiful, and ended up including a G8689 mini mill along with boxes of lathe cutters and end mills, vices, rotary table, three chucks including collets, VFD for the 3 phase motor he had added to the lathe, and lots and lots of extraneous tools. It ended up being over 1200# of stuff. We than continued our vacation taking care to avoid rough dirt roads, poor old van. We even drove through the big redwood tree with the tunnel through it, after folding in the rear view mirrors. How many lathes have done that!?
When we got home three and a half weeks had gone by and it took me another week just to get all the stuff down the stairs to my little basement bedroom shop. Getting the "lathe" ended up with being much much more stuff than we ever anticipated, all for about the price of a new lathe delivered, but the extras, oh the extras! Plus the vacation!
To make a long story short ;-) and more to the point. The lathe gets used a lot as of late, and the unexpected little milling machine gets a bunch of use also. If I had my drothers, I would prefer to have a couple of sizes larger milling machine. My biggest gripe is that the table travel is, to me, ridiculously small. I needed to mill the outer perimeter of an out of square chunk of 3/4" thick by 4.5" by 5.5" mild steel and I had to do a complete setup for each of the four sides. The milling went quick, what took forever was the set up time for each one of the sides individually. I do love the little thing for very accurate drilling and positioning holes and tapping. You can get precision out of the little fellow if you take a lot of time and work hard enough. It all ends up with what you want to use it for, and if you are anything like me (heavens forbid) you don't know exactly what you will be using it for. If I had to do with either the lathe or the mill, I would choose the lathe, but then I work on telescopes which are round in nature and benefit from a machine that can do round stuff. A milling machine is one of the few machines out there that can essentially make another copy of itself, not so much with a lathe. Good luck with whatever decision you make, and keep us informed of what you decide, and how it goes.
CHuck the grumpy old guy
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2014
- Messages
- 350
It all comes down to dollars for us hobby people. The HF is the bottom in cost, quality, and customer service. The same machine from Grizzly will (in my experience) be better made and they have always been good to me on service. The LMS version costs more, but has longer Y travel. Next up are the Grizzly mill/drills starting with the 758 @ 850 or so. More money, more capacity, less required fixing to make it work right.
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2013
- Messages
- 176
Cheap is good. $250.00 more for the Grizzly is only a value if you already have a bunch of MT-3 tooling. I've heard the horror stories, but my HF mini mill had no problems out of the box. For someone who does not work with machine tools every day I think it is a learning experience to take the machine apart, clean it out and de-burr the bits. There really are not that many parts to it. You'd have to do the same thing to a worn out chunk of 'murrican ahrn and little mills like the X-2 are not common anywhere. I've only seen a couple of Benchmaster mills on the local craigslist in the last several years,and both were more than $1000.00. Just looking at the fit and finish of my X-2 and my ca. 1954 Craftsman lathe the X-2 is more nicely made. Both were made to a price point and both work really well.
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2014
- Messages
- 929
Having purchased a PM-25 and taken it apart completely and reassembled it I would not be put off by buying a mill from HF minimill. I got a smoking deal on a 7x12 mini lathe from HF and spent another couple hundred upgrading the spindle, belt drive, metal gears, spindle bearings etc... It was/is a good experience and I have learned a lot about how a metal lathe works. The only problem is now I want a bigger machine, not a need, just a want.
