If you had 1000 dollars what mini mill would you buy?

[Heavy Metal]

Brian -
I know Steve (IHB) isn't real happy with his Taig - for what he does - but I've been working my little Taig pretty hard and it just keeps on cranking. Just throwing that out there in case you end up making a deal with Steve on his. Granted I'm only doing aluminum and doing pretty small parts. I got a real good deal on mine fully CNC'd w/ Microproto controller and including a HEAVY steel frame work bench and fully enclosed with a nice plexi cabinet and chip chute/tray. For milling my small aluminum parts I really haven't found anything yet where the rigidity of the mill or the motor power was my limit except or the stuff with bigger end mills that I don't do much. Steve mentioned fly cutting being a problem with his and I ended up needing to do some last weekend on a big chunk of aluminum plate. Whole operation went real smooth taking like .01 or .015 on each pass. Real nice finish...ran smooth as butter. Obviously a bigger mill could've hogged through a deeper cut...but, hey if you don't have the money then take extra time. I think having the Taig bolted down to the big steel frame bench is part of the success with mine.

Now...not saying I wouldn't like a bigger mill and I might start looking soon but the Taig has worked out well so far. ****...I've worn a drive belt out making parts with this thing already.

One other note...I also had a MaxNC closed loop servo CNC mill and IMO it was too lightweight for any kind of metal work. Don't want to knock the company or anyone that uses them but I sold mine and kept the Taig.

Guess that's my two cents. Keep in mind I'm relatively new to machining in general.

Joe

[ihbuilder]

Joe , for what I'm getting into , the tiag is to small . It is a good lil machine but has its limits . I'm glad I got it when I did , it beats the dremel . But as always with me , I out grow what I think will work at the time I buy it . It'll be a lil while till I let it go . It's nice to have a manuel mill in the shop for 1 of's . In my thinking it still needs to be replaced before it goes by a cinci or BP . but we'll see how the cnc mill works . My wife got tired of hearing me cussing last night and ordered my vise and converter . HMMM I'll have to cuss some more maybe a cnc lathe next

[pugs]

Well, lots of people make some really cool thing with mini mills. Myself, I don't think I could handle one of them, have a 7x10 mini lathe that I absolutely hate, but my dad thinks its great for little stuff like turning necks on bullet cases.

With your budget, I would look for a slightly bigger benchtop mill like the Rong-Fu type size. They also make good candidates for future cnc conversion. But if you think a mini mill will work for what you want to do then go for it.