Mill to match a monarch 10ee

I've been reading about the Monarch 10ee with a lot of interest and the thought occured to me, what would be a mill that is of equivalent quality that would match the 10ee ??

Matt.

Deckel FP2 or 3 with active DRO

BTW You had elections in the US did`nt you
Who wun ??
Peter

peterve said:

BTW You had elections in the US did`nt you
Who wun ??
Peter

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Obama won, but I am not in the US, I am in Australia

Matt.

Matty5700 said:

Obama won, but I am not in the US, I am in Australia

Matt.

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Lucky you.

peterve said:

Deckel FP2 or 3 with active DRO

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Thanks for the recommendation, i'll look into it further in the morning.

Does anyone else have any recommendations or is this the only one worth recommending ??

Matt.

State a better purpose.... each machine has strengths and weaknesses.... a Deckel is not a hog mill if thats what you you need, but ok for jig machining. If you want to hog get a K & T or Cincinnati Dial type mill.... a big heavy 50 taper machine.... or if you are doing wind turbine parts a HBM may be in order.

WILLEO6709 said:

State a better purpose.... each machine has strengths and weaknesses.... a Deckel is not a hog mill if thats what you you need, but ok for jig machining.

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I presumed he sort of did state his "purpose" in that he said equivalent to Monarch 10ee... so I'm thinking small but not too small size/weight, super precision and yet somewhat rigid, but not for "hogging", under $10,000, etc......

The Deckel FP2...second generation one... (as opposed to 3rd generation as Peterve recommends) would be a near perfect match ...in capabilities, size and appearance and price.

Alternatively, Aciera F4 or Schaublin 13 mills would be good matches as well. It is a curiosity that the USA produced a number of super precision smallish/moderate size toolrooms lathes (10ee and Hardinge HLV-H...plus Rivett, Hendy and a few others) but I can't think of any USA milling machines that fall into that category. (and the first one to mention the Hardinge mill gets a dope slap as it's not even remotely in the category of a 10ee)... maybe the Brown and Sharpe Omniversal...maybe a Gorton.. but they are kinda on the larger side...

I'd like to find a 10EE or similar small toolroom lathe to compliment my Van Norman 22LU. The VN is larger than a bridgeport and has tooling quirks. However, it has 3 axis power feeds, does horizontal and vertical milling, has a universal table, and is quite massive/rigid. The newer, slightly larger model 24 would probably be an improvement with 50 taper if you could find one. They were probably built to a slighly lower price point than the monarch and deckel machines. However, I was able to get much of the available tooling and attachments along with my mill.

The omniversal beats my VN for the gadget-factor.

For hole location and boring it would be a Moore jig bore. But they are only capable of light milling. For milling as well as precision boring and location you would have to jump in size to a DeVlieg 2B-36. But that is a 14,000 lb machine, with about a 8' square footprint.

What a K&T 2D???
Certainly a toolroom machine and has the cool gizmo's factor with the rotary head! I know I sure want one!

Good point. The 2D sounds like a good compliment. I recall it having a relatively small work area but a lot of versatility in that area for a manual machine. There are discussions on them in the Heavy Iron forum. It could be difficult to set up a simple-reading DRO if you want that.

Mind you we are talking solely manual machines. Because of the rotary head, it really opens up the possibilities with a stand alone machine.

Besides, they are flat out neat lookin' AND made in the USA!

Matty5700,
Were you the lucky winner of the 10EE on Oz ebay recently?

Alan said:

Matty5700,
Were you the lucky winner of the 10EE on Oz ebay recently?

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Nope, but I did see the ad for it.

Matt.

Unfortunately, small mills aren't rigid...mass is your friend when it comes to orthogonal sliding ways which aren't as rigid as opposed rolling element bearings.

So I'm not sure if that exists. A Deckel will certainly get you in the same price-tag range as a "good" 10EE. I'm not personally convinced they are the gold standard...so flame away...reason is: if they were vastly superior in performance they'd have been knocked off and built worldwide but I know of no such activity other than reading about Iranian knockoffs....which we aren't likely to be able to purchase A Deckel reminds me of how they recycled the shaper casting patterns when shapers became obsolete

So...to answer your question...I don't think a single functional equivalent exists. A horizontal mill certainly has the structure to plow off metal, but it comes up short when doing "jig" type activities.

I did work with a guy who was once employed by Devlieg as a controls/electrical engineer. What he told me was the end test of the machine was to bore a 4" hole. They then cycled the machine to the max limits of all axis travels and back to the original location where they bored again at the same location. If the result was more than .0004" "egged" they took everything back apart and started alignment-scraping again, to eventually reiterate back to the same test.

In the small machine portion of my shop, I have two 10EE's, a 20 inch version, and a 30 inch model. Within 20 feet of these two machines, resides one of the nicest Brown and Sharpe Omniversals in the world (thanks Don), a Kearney and Trecker 2D rotary mill, 2 Moore Jig Bores, a Sip Mp5E, a Devlieg 2b-36, a spectactularly nice Ex-Cell-O double end boring machine, a Cincinati 207MK vertical mill, and a Bridgeport Mill. Which one gets used almost every day for practically every little niggly job? The Bridgeport. Is it up to parr with a 10EE? Not to sound blasphemous- YOU BET! The other machines certainly have their strengths, I love the 2D for the rotary work, the Moores for their preciseness. I've bragged about what a great machine the little 2B-36 is, but the Bridgeport hands down, gets the bulk of the second op work in my shop. Anyone who pooh-poohs a Bridgeport, is being a machine tool snob.

If I could only have ONE milling-boring machine, it would be tough to call which machine I would keep. But when it gets down to small comparable size to the Monarch 10EE, (which one- the 20 or the 30 inch model ?) The Bridgeport at around 2200 pounds, verses the approximate 4000 pouinds of the VERY SIMILARLY sized Omniversal, despite the cool features of the Omniversal, I'd still go for the Bridgeport. But to qualify this even further, since my Bridgeport is located 8 feet from my Moores, I have around forty Moore Boring heads, that quickly screw into my Moore R-8 adapter. With the other 100 or so R-8 toolholders, this mill is really well tooled. Why Bore holes in a Bridgeport, rather than use the Moore? Not all holes have high tolerances, the parts were milled in the vice, the DRO's already set, for a center or edge. If I have to have a hole a particular size, and I run part lots, chances are my Moore toolholder is already SET to size. throw it in the Bridgeport and go. It's certainly accurate enough for 95% of the parts I run. BUT since it's not my only mill- I don't have to hog material in it. Lots of other mills out in my shop for removing material. It's got a Kurt vice mounted thats trammed in square, and for doing keyways or other work, it's quick. YAH-Right I Know I'm supposed to be cutting keys while my parts in the lathe with a VersaMil.

Lagun makes a good mill iffin you do not like B.ports,I have 1 of each,like em both just fine.
But everything is a compromise isnt it?Enjoy.
GW

matt_isserstedt said:

So I'm not sure if that exists. A Deckel will certainly get you in the same price-tag range as a "good" 10EE. I'm not personally convinced they are the gold standard...so flame away...reason is: if they were vastly superior in performance they'd have been knocked off and built worldwide but I know of no such activity other than reading about Iranian knockoffs....which we aren't likely to be able to purchase A Deckel reminds me of how they recycled the shaper casting patterns when shapers became obsolete

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Wow...that statement about Deckel copies is so wrong I don't know where to begin. First off, the Iranian Deckel's are not copies but real Deckels ! That began as a Deckel liscensed plant in Iran and just continued on beyond the DMG merger somehow. Kinda like when VW stopped making Beetles but they still made them in Mexico for decades afterwards (ok not perfect analogy but I did say "kinda")

Secondly, the Deckel design is in reality copied way more than you realize if you don't have historial background in world machine tools and don't follow what goes on in Europe in the used machine market. I never ceased to be amazed at the sheer number of "Deckel like" mills from various manufacturers that keep turning up. And I don't mean the more known ones like Maho, Aciera, Hermle, Mikron and Schaublin....but from TOS, Sinn, Metba, Hispano Susa, Ferrari, Riken, Alexander and on and on with names that escape me, from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Chek, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, UK, Japan and yes, China.

Sure the Bridgeport design is copied more in sheer production numbers, but consider the vast majority of the copies are from Tawain and China...and the REASON it is copied so much is not so much that it is "superior" but it is CHEAPER TO BUILD...way simplier machine than a Deckel type mill. Way more Atlas lathes built than Monarch 10ee's... does that mean the Atlas was better ?

I have brochures and country specific machine tool association books back to the mid 1980's and you'd be amazed at the number of "Deckel like" mills that one rarely sees in the USA... way more common than Bridgeport copies in Europe. And at least a dozen Deckel like mill models from China. But you never see them here because even the Chinese ones are too expensive for the USA market...due to their complexity of two spindles and integral power feeds in all axis. Europeans are willing to pay for these features, most Americans are not.

A small sampling of Deckel "copies" below... and I stress.. a small sample...there exist way, way more than this...

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/metba.jpg
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/polamco.jpg
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/chinadeckel.jpg
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/chinadeckel2.jpg
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/emco.jpg
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/lars.jpg
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/unimac1.jpg

And FWIW, Deckel itself may have been based on a Thiel design. Thiel made modern mills into the 1980's also.

http://www.lathes.co.uk/thiel/

Brian@VersaMil said:

. Anyone who pooh-poohs a Bridgeport, is being a machine tool snob.

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That statement might have some credibility if you had ever actually owned and used a Deckel mill. But since you haven't, it doesn't

When our toolroom was upgraded in the 1960's, they bought Cincinatti 1-D Toolmasters to go along with the 10EEs. We're still using most of what they bought then.

I couldn't give away one of the mills last year. It was sold for scrap.
JR