I want a mill & lathe

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  • phylodog

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    I've had a long standing desire to learn how to use a mill and a lathe. I've done some very minor work on my drill press but it obviously isn't set up for it and my results are lackluster. The problem is that I know absolutely nothing, zero, zip, nada about machining. It fascinates me and always has, I could easily spend hours on end watching YouTube videos watching these tools work. I also love to tinker and make things but I know I could do so much more with the right tools. I made this fidget spinner awhile back using my drill press, a step drill, hacksaw, small belt sander and files/sandpaper. It gets the job done but a properly machined version would spin true, be balanced and spin a lot longer.

    [video=youtube;Uo1aE1tC7wc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo1aE1tC7wc[/video]

    I'm reasonably mechanically inclined and prefer the DIY approach if at all possible. I'm not looking at building parts for NASA and can't afford to spend tons of money. I've looked at the small offerings from Seig, Harbof Freight, Grizzly, etc.. For those with the knowledge on running these things, should I save my pennies and buy them? Am I begging for disaster trying to teach myself rather than seeking professional instruction? I've never had an issue with power tools, never hurt myself with one so respecting the equipment isn't an issue.
     

    churchmouse

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    Look for used equipment. A lot of this will come with at least basic tooling to get you started.
    A buddy bought a good mill at an auction last year and it had more tooling than he will ever use. I use it.........a lot. Self taught mainly. Have someone get you started and learn from there. Follow the safety advise as these things can and will bust you up if you do not respect them.

    Get a lathe with at least a 1" throat.
     

    phylodog

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    Look for used equipment. A lot of this will come with at least basic tooling to get you started.
    A buddy bought a good mill at an auction last year and it had more tooling than he will ever use. I use it.........a lot. Self taught mainly. Have someone get you started and learn from there. Follow the safety advise as these things can and will bust you up if you do not respect them.

    Get a lathe with at least a 1" throat.

    You've seen my garage, I'll be luck if I can squeeze the small table top models in there! If I buy a big lathe I'm going to want to try to work on a rifle and that's gonna cost me a fortune when I destroy the first 5 of them I attempt lol.
     

    target64

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    I have a harbor freight 7x10 mini lathe. If I was to do it again, I would go with a 7x 12, in this circumstance bigger is better. I have had no issues with it as far as power or reliability. Be prepared to obtain intimate knowledge of all of the moving parts. Either way have fun and keep your fingers out of the spinning parts.
     

    churchmouse

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    You've seen my garage, I'll be luck if I can squeeze the small table top models in there! If I buy a big lathe I'm going to want to try to work on a rifle and that's gonna cost me a fortune when I destroy the first 5 of them I attempt lol.

    Yeah I thought of that when I posted.
    The issue with a hobby or table top model is it will be somewhat limited.
    Also, working on a rifle will have your nose in the Grizzly catalog every night...:):

    Still.....look at used units. They are near impossible to ruin. If it looks bad pass.

    Drill mills might fit your needs. Again, used. Possible tooling.
     

    MontereyC6

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    Mills and lathes are my line of work. This summer will make 25 years working in a machine shop, however most of my time now is devoted to quoting jobs, design work, and programming for our cnc machines. Like CM said, auctions is a great place to find equipment. With the amount of local shops that have gone out of business in the last 10 years, there is plenty of used equipment in the local market. If you have the room, steer clear of the small stuff, the combo units look cute, but will not hold up or hold tolerance like you will want. If I can be any help, shoot me a pm and we can talk off of the boards.
     

    churchmouse

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    Mills and lathes are my line of work. This summer will make 25 years working in a machine shop, however most of my time now is devoted to quoting jobs, design work, and programming for our cnc machines. Like CM said, auctions is a great place to find equipment. With the amount of local shops that have gone out of business in the last 10 years, there is plenty of used equipment in the local market. If you have the room, steer clear of the small stuff, the combo units look cute, but will not hold up or hold tolerance like you will want. If I can be any help, shoot me a pm and we can talk off of the boards.

    And Ingo delivers again...............:ingo:
     

    4651feeder

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    Had a used Combo Lathe/Mill | Grizzly Industrial that I found used. Unfortunately it didn't make the move with me five years ago, it was great to putz around on. After I got settled into my new digs, found myself yearning again for another small lathe just to tinker on. Mistakenly bought a Horror Freight Mini lathe that I swear didn't have the guts to power thru plastic let alone alloys without bogging down; couldn't sell it quick enough. You know fidget spinners and the likes are a lot easier and cleaner to 3d print these days then they are to mill....just saying.
     

    ChristianPatriot

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    I'm right there with you phylo. I LOVE machining. I've watched so many gunsmith videos it's crazy. If it payed like my current job, I'd build precision rifles all day. One of my favorites jobs in my line of work is aligning pumps the old school way with dial indicators. Getting a pump aligned within .001 all the way around is awesome.
     

    1911ly

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    This thing is a fun piece of machinery. I have made a lot of stuff with it. Guns, parts for cars and various projects.It is a 3:1 machine. Lath, mill and drill press. It is a bit of a compromise for some things but works very well.



    The tooling adds up. A cutter for this, a tool for measuring that, etc... But it is a lot of fun!
     

    Kurr

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    I'm in the same boat but for the small footprint of work i plan on doin, im hoping to go with Taig. Turnkey CNC, 10,000 rpm speed for engraving and .0015 tolerance out the box for 2600. This will be for coin die type work and maybe some gun parts / knife stuff.
     

    CountryBoy19

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    Machines:
    I will STRONGLY caution you to not get a combo machine. You have the space for dedicated machines, you just have to make some changes. IE, I had to build a shed to get the lawn-mower etc out of the garage. Now I've graduated up to a 1000 square foot pole barn. I used to be in a "2 car garage" (would be really hard to fit 2 cars comfortably) and I had my machines all against 1 wall, bar-stock rack on the front wall, and tool-boxes and shelves against the other side, leaving room for my wife to still park her car inside. You just have to get creative on space and machine layout to make it work.

    I have run numerous machines. I have numerous hours at the controls of a Smithy 3 in 1, thank goodness it wasn't mine. I will tell anybody that asks me, "if I were given a 3 in 1 machine I would promptly sell it to fund a proper machine".

    Why the distaste towards them? They work great for the lathe function, it's when you get into milling and drilling that they go downhill quickly. There is no good way to work out the feed hand-wheel for the X-axis (length of the bed) when milling, they're all a compromise, some down-right dangerous IMHO. Typically these cheap machines have carriage/table locks that are not only difficult to operate, they are hard to reach (on the back, under the table/cross-slide is most common); that is just asinine, a major PITA to actually operate. The lubrication channels etc are generally not up to "par" and they will wear much faster than a properly lubed machine. All that being said, the biggest gripe have with them is well-demonstrated in 1911ly's picture. A standard knee-mill has a table (knee) that travels up and down and still maintains positional accuracy. This means that as you machine different features at different heights, or use different lengths of tools it's quick and easy to change the height of the part to make the cut. The combo machines don't have a table that moves up and down, they normally have a mill-head that moves up and down on some sort of pivot point. The problem with this is that as soon as you loosen the locks to crank it up higher you lose zero and must re-zero. What if your edge finder won't reach the part at the new mill height? Now you've got a real dilemma. We found that you can solve some of that problem by minimizing your "long" tools, IE, cut the shank off reamers, buy short-length drill bits etc. But it's still a major PITA and it's one of the biggest stumbling blocks. Example: lets say you need to mill a pocket then drill & ream a hole in that pocket. You have to set the mill-head low to get an end-mill to reach the pocket. In a collet the end-mill only sticks out 1.5". Then when drilling you change to your drill chuck, the drill chuck adds 3" to the spindle, then the drill bit adds another 4. You've added 5.5" in length when stepping from the end-mill to the drill bit; the quill doesn't have that much travel so you have to change your setup. Then put a chucking reamer in, it's 11" long, you've added another 7", and the mill head won't go high enough to clear the part, so now you have to go cut your chucking reamer shorter just to even ream the hole.

    I would recommend that you get a good American or European mill. This market bears very little in the way of benchtop units, but there are some out there; the command a premium and only come up for sale occasionally. You can get a floor model knee mill much more easily. Beware of the Bridgeport name, they command a premium for what they offer and many of them are clapped out. If you just cannot in any way make one of those work and you plan to buy an import bench-top unit, at minimum I recommend buying a benchtop mill, and a benchtop lathe as separate machines. You will be MUCH better off.

    As far as lathe's go, there are plenty of southbends etc out there that are great for light-duty. Once again, there are a lot of them that have been clapped out. Be ready to do some repairs and some level of rebuilding. I bought my SB 10" for $300, bought a 1-phase motor for it, bought a $30 rebuild kit on ebay, then spent 2 weeks tearing it down, degreasing, repairing, tuning/adjusting, etc. That doesn't include paint.

    More recently (last year) I upgraded my lathe; the SB just wasn't big enough or capable enough to do what I needed so I bought a Leblond 15 X 78 that stands over 4' tall, almost 12' long, and weighs just under 4,000 lbs. I'm 80% done with my 100% restore (all new paint, all worn parts replaced if possible, worn castings repaired with bushings etc, oil-lines replaced where needed etc).

    ETA, 1911ly is right, the tooling cost does add up. At my best, off the top of my head estimate, my tooling cost/value: SB lathe $900, Leblonde (by the time I'm done with the restore) $7000, Index Mill (from INGO member IndyGunWorks) $2000. Tooling, vices, fixtures, measurement tools, cutters, mill arbors, toolboxes to hold it all etc $15,000+



    Learning to machine: I'm self-taught, back in college we had a shop for the students, I lived in there, learning everything I could. I ruined a lot of things on the college's budget. From there I went to work for a machine shop and now have my own shop at home. I've never had formal training. With or without formal training there is absolutely no substitute for "time on the handles". You will break things, ruin things, and learn a lot of lessons the hard way. It's the name of the game. I suggest you make those mistakes with cheaper equipment and tooling now vs expensive stuff later. That being said, there are resources to get you started. Tubelcain on youtube has tons of great videos. There are also training videos from the MIT Student machineshop: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF06SHGgSg4Fk5-yeh8DN3g6ZgaM0tbk7 or https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG8tVvd9GeWkFVcim_m5NUGLcwQ_BaXMZ

     
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    BiscuitsandGravy

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    You are just going to have to keep your eye out for one... I stumbled upon my SB 16x8 last summer for $500. Original paint, everything works but its going to be a rebuild project. Its a little big (8' bed). It was all about timing, it was at a sale, I saw it, had to buy it or it would have been gone. Friend has a SB Heavy 10 he picked up at a sale a few years ago.

    Sometimes people will have them in their garages and say 'its taking up space, get it out of here'.

    There is a good YT channel called (EDIT- Country boy already mentioned mrpete22/tubelcain) for machining.

    Did you mention a budget?

    Tooling will be the $$$ part.

    Good luck.

    :ingo:
     

    CountryBoy19

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    You are just going to have to keep your eye out for one... I stumbled upon my SB 16x8 last summer for $500. Original paint, everything works but its going to be a rebuild project. Its a little big (8' bed). It was all about timing, it was at a sale, I saw it, had to buy it or it would have been gone. Friend has a SB Heavy 10 he picked up at a sale a few years ago.

    Sometimes people will have them in their garages and say 'its taking up space, get it out of here'.

    There is a good YT channel called (EDIT- Country boy already mentioned mrpete22/tubelcain) for machining.

    Did you mention a budget?

    Tooling will be the $$$ part.

    Good luck.

    :ingo:
    Your post brings up something I forgot about SB lathes; be cautious of the bed-length measurement. Almost all lathe manufacturers list bed length as center-to-center distance except SB, they use total bed-length including head-stock. IE, a 16 X 8 SB is 8 feet long, with a center-to-center distance of about 4-5 feet. Whereas, like my Leblond, a 15 X 78, the bed (minus headstock) is about 108" long, and the entire lathe is 140" long.
     

    phylodog

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    Great info being shared and I appreciate it. Budget is limited as this is basically nothing more than a hobby interest. If I had intentions or a belief that I could make money with it in the future I might be willing to spend more but hitting $1000 for either a mill or a lathe is unlikely to happen. As far as space is concerned, I'm stuck in a subdivision and unable to build a shed or barn so I'm stuck with what I have. There is simply no room for a free standing unit.
     

    Ballistix

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    I have a metal lathe and have ran a large lathe and Bridgeport mill. The small bench top models of lathes and mills, won't have the accuracy or power of the larger, more precision machines.
    I've seen several lathes listed on CL recently for decent prices. A lathe and a mill have different functions and if your wallet is thin, are you considering only one, or both?
    You may have to decide which one will fit your budget and potential use. Then concentrate on the one machine for now.

    Just curious... why not a small cnc router? It is capable of machining non-ferrous metals. It will make items like the spinners, very quickly and you would also have 3D capabilities.
    With a mill, to achieve 3D, cnc controllers would need to be added. That gets expensive quick.
     

    phylodog

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    Learning to operate manual machines has more draw to me than CNC. I just don't think I'd get the sense of pride having a computer control everything for me. I'm pretty handy with Google Sketchup and my Son tells me that if I can swing that I wouldn't have an issue learning a CAD program.

    I'd like to have both eventually but a lathe would be my first purchase if I end up going down this road. I know the benchtop models aren't going to hold tolerances to ten thousandths but they'll certainly do better than I can with a drill press and hand tools and its just for tinkering so I don't think I'd be disappointed in their abilities.
     

    churchmouse

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    Learning to operate manual machines has more draw to me than CNC. I just don't think I'd get the sense of pride having a computer control everything for me. I'm pretty handy with Google Sketchup and my Son tells me that if I can swing that I wouldn't have an issue learning a CAD program.

    I'd like to have both eventually but a lathe would be my first purchase if I end up going down this road. I know the benchtop models aren't going to hold tolerances to ten thousandths but they'll certainly do better than I can with a drill press and hand tools and its just for tinkering so I don't think I'd be disappointed in their abilities.

    My 1st drill mill was pretty decent for the work we did with it. Not building the space shuttle in my shop but we did make a lot of really nice pieces with it. Patience/set up and did I mention patience.
     
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