Mill: Gear head vs. Belt driven

Looking at getting a mill, first one. Sorry for the basic question.

How noisey is the geared head versus belt driven? I guess changing speed is a lot more convenient. I know switching the motor and adding a VFD is an option, but would like to hold off the additional cost for awhile.

Also, can someone explain how realistic it is to tap with the gear head milling machine?

Thanks in advance.

Depending on the range of speeds and whether the belt-driven version has a "back gear" you may find it much easier to tap with the geared head.

Otherwise said, controllable tapping is more of a function of the spindle speed than what's going on up top.

Make sure you have a reversing motor or power tapping will be a drag....

-Matt

do you mean variable belt drive or geared head? a BP J head is a belt driven with manyally changed step pullys and a V belt, a 2J variable speed BP is still a belt drive but it uses a variable pully that changes speeds for you with a crank. A gear head mill is normally a larger machine like a Cincinnati or K+T etc. Just a bit of educational input.

what i hear is that the small geared head machines will break gears if you stick a flycutter. belt drive is quieter and belt slippage can be a good thing.

dt

One newbie to another, I'd go with the belt drive. I've done some pretty stupid things with my belt drive knee mill, and the worst that happened was a little smoke from the belt. A bad belt can be replaced in a day for $5; a broken gear that has to come from China can put you out of business for months.

Belt drive or gear drive really doesn't make too much difference if you are running a samll milling machine. Most of the time you will be in open belt drive.

The back gears on a B'port type mill are useful for slowing the spindle down when using big drills or fairly large diameter end mills in tough steel.

If you expect to do a lot of boring with an off set boring head then you will want the slow speeds also.

One of the nicest small mills that I have run is the Gorton fixed head millers. They usually have a No.9 B&S spindle and are belt drive only.

Thee belt pulleys are big, they can really take a heavy cut. The machines are very quiet in all speeds and some of the top speeds are very high.

They have a quill but hand feed only. The Gortons of this size occupy a kind of gray area between Gorton's heavy series engravers (P2 and P3)and the light tool room milling machine.

The spindles are really good and the machine is light and sensitive. Gorton offered a ball bearing X-Y Joystick operated tracing table attachement for them. In that case the machines were 1:1 engravers.

Thanks for all the inputs. I am a newbie at it and want to buy a newer import instead of an old iron, mainly because I don't want to "fix up" used/abused ones. This puts me at around $1500 budget, maybed can be stretched a bit to get the Grizzly G3102 small knee mill...

Yucholian said:

Thanks for all the inputs. I am a newbie at it and want to buy a newer import instead of an old iron, mainly because I don't want to "fix up" used/abused ones. This puts me at around $1500 budget, maybed can be stretched a bit to get the Grizzly G3102 small knee mill...

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Thanks for starting this thread! Lots of good info!
I have a 220V motor on my mill, and I was just wondering if I would be able to change out the motor but I was wondering if I got a 1.5 or 2hp 110/115V motor? Or do I need to order a motor thats made to "fit" the mill?
Thanks for the this thread and everyone thanks for your time!