What mill to buy

[Peter B]

I am looking to buy a small cnc milling machine but I am not familiar with either the Taig or the Shreline . I think these units would work very well size wise in my shop. Just wondering if anybody out there have had any experince with either . Thank's I would appreciate any advice.

[9W Monighan]

Review a past post on this subject.
I know a guy with a Sherline and he likes it but it takes forever to mill larger pieces that will fit on the table. He did have to send the table back and get a new one because it wasn't machined properly. He uses BobCad software for programming. If I was looking at a bench mill, I would try to go a tad bit heavier .

[pugs]

There are quite a few home brew cnc conversions of the Rong-Fu type bench top mills if you look around. I would opt for one of those long before the little taig or sherline, but then I am used to much larger stuff (I can't stand the 7x10 lathe I have). There are alot of people that do just fine with the little sherlines and taigs, as for which one of the 2 is better I have no experience with either.

[SmallHaul]

I have a Sherline lathe and also a Sherline mill. They are very good quality machines but... they are very small. You would probably be happier in the long run to get a larger machine.

[Peter B]

Thanks for the info.

[fhhhstix]

Here is a link to a previous thread.

http://www.rctruckandconstruction.com/showthread.php?t=656

Travis

[td9clyde]

i have a bolton 12x20 lathe /milling machine combo it does everything i need to do pluss other things i have no clue about lol Izzy has ran it and Travis has watched it lol

[Blender]

I too have a sherline mill converted to CNC. It's kinda small, but it works fine. I'm used to shallow cuts, so i don't mind the additional time it takes to cut stuff. I bought the sherline because every additional tool is available from the manufacturer. No need to adapt any tooling if i don't want to. Also, out of the box it holds pretty good accuracy. Some tweaks will get it the last little bit. My biggest complaint is the shallow throat. I'll have to buy/make a spacer to fix that. I believe taig has a superior backlash elimination system. I've got 5-6 thousandths so i depend on the software to compensate.

For comparison i also bought a Harbor freight (aka seig) 7x10 lathe after reading glowing reviews on the internet. The thing is heavy and crappy. It took about a week to get set up and I still can't get the tailstock aligned. maybe im doing it wrong or im just bad at it but it makes me so mad that it is unusable out of the box. I plan to swap it for a taig lathe sometime. For now it just takes up space on my work bench. All the "rigidity" it has over other (small) lathes means nothing to me if it can't make concentric features.

If i were to do it all over again i'd either buy the taig mill or if i had more cash to spend i would look at a new turnkey mill like a Tormach or similar. Originally i wanted to pick up an old bridgeport or something, but i've realized i wouldn't know how to pick one out. The older equipment is awesome, i used some of it in college, but i don't have anyone to show me the ropes when it comes to buying one.

I suppose the most important question for the thread starter is what do you plan on making? What kind of materials do you wish to use?

[Peter B]

I have an older southbend lathe that is very good and I use it a lot . The mill would only be used for modeling.
Thank's for the info very helpful.

[tc1cat]

After 25 years of running various CNC machines, I would get the biggest you have room for. I have 2 Sherline mills, 1 Taig mill, a Micromark larger mill, 2 Sherline lathes, and a South Bend lathe. The Sherlines have been worth every penny they cost. The Taig has been a BIG dissappoint for me- not as accurate as I thought it should/would be. The S. Bend lathe is a pre-WWII hobbyist machine with split bushings in the headstock not bearings but it is rather large- 9"X48". One of the Sherline mills is a CNC conversion by Microkenetics- I do not reccomend this company at all. I am presently changing it over to the Sherline system. Granted the Sherlines are smaller than a lot of the other machines and lighter by far. They will do the job if you are concious of their limitations. If I had to do everything all over again without the space limitations I have, I would get a floor model CNC mill and lathe.

Hope this helps?!?!?!

Lynn

[Peter B]

Thanks very much ,have never had a mill so all info is appreciated.

[Vanisle]

Have you checked out the BF 20/25 style mills. There are various versions but a popular one is the Grizzly G0704 (Grizzly sells out fast and always seems to be backordered). There is a fellow who is a bit of an "expert" on it and has created a DVD showing how to convert it to CNC (and also how to increase the spindle speed to 7200 rpm and to convert it to a Manual Auto Drawbar, etc.). Here is his website with lots of info on the G0704:

http://www.g0704.com/

[D8R]

Hi Peter, with my (little) knollage about mills and lathes I would recommend as big as possible. Did get a bigger lathe last year (no CNC but with digital readouts) and my milling machine RF35 (also with DRO) is a little to small for my model works. But I´m building rather big models (scale ~1-5.6) so it´s big pieces and normaly in steel.
would love to have a CNC mill but can´t get one inside the house if I choose the size I want to.
Dan

[ihbuilder]

Peter

get as big as you can ;) trust me ;) when I cut the drop arm for my frame-less , I had to reposition it 6 times on my tiag . since then , I've been cursing the day I got it and not the good used BP I got a 3 ton milltronics cnc knee mill that I hope to have running soon then the tiag gona get the boot for a manual BP for doing 1 or 2 of's simple things that take more time to program then to do by hand . Don't get me wrong the tiag Is a good lil machine , but has it's limitations but take it from TC1cat he has both and is a machinist longer then me .

IHSteve

[Peter B]

Thank's everyone I think I will wait and get somthing bigger. Appreciate all the help.

[grumpygrady]

i have a mini-mill but it is all manual an x-3 i think, works great for models
but if i get a chance i am going to get a bigger one

but it is a lot easier to do small things in a big mill than it is to do large things in a small mill
i do believe that you should get the biggest you can for the money and space
plus most bigger mills use R8 tooling the manuals anyway
but if you want some links to mill web pages i will post some
you can find a nice new cnc mill for about 5000 dollars us
and as you go bigger the price raises also lol
the one thing i do kick myself over is i had a chance to buy a nice 3-1 machine mill/drill and lathe and i passed it by because i thought it wasn't going to be any good boy was i ever wrong lol
my buddy has it and loves it but again most are manual

if you have never had a mill before check out your community collage and see if they have a course
great to go over basics and new things


good luck
grumpy

[Lil Giants]

I was told by a machinist that morse taper is the better choice with a wider variety of tooling... or is it just a matter of preference?

I have a small mill for in the house (similar to the taig), I don't care to use it much anymore b/c x-y travels are too small & the work piece rarely fits properly. I had a small lathe once (3.5x12), changed up to a 7.5x36, which was much better to work with, but I cooked the wiring out of it by pushing it too hard ($1500 model, you get what you pay for). I'm finally gonna build myself a decent sized man cave this summer, I look forward to a bigger - better manual lathe & mill in the future.

[pugs]

I would opt for a small mill with R-8 tooling over morse taper. It releases easier and there are quite a few companies out there that make mill tooling for it. Years ago it may have been that morse taper tooling was more prevelant.

Myself I want to find a manual mill that takes Cat40 tools as thats what I have for the VMC stuff and hate having 2 different systems.

[grumpygrady]

check out this forum

http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/showthread.php?t=29250

http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/showthread.php?t=32849

and this one

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?action=printpage;topic=12299.0

[derailed]

i'm the proud owner of a microlux mill and lathe
available through micromark
i cut 4 foot long frame rails on my little mill

glenn