Ideal Home Shop Mill To Own?

[PDW]

Good job Michael, craigslist and facebook marketplace,(and here obviously) can be all be good sources of obtaining tooling at a bargain. You can get carried away buying things, but in reality, if this is for a home shop, what do you actually need to do basic machining? Buy quality when you can at a rate that you can afford. Jim Here is one suggestion. I bought one myself and it seems like a well made tool. (that company has quite a bit of different tooling and I believe you can buy direct rather than amazon) : https://www.amazon.ca/Accusize-Carb...35ed5&pd_rd_wg=yygN6&pd_rd_i=B00HQMXSM2&psc=1

IME those face mills are crap - they beat the spindle with heavy vibration and the geometry sucks. That's on both a B/port with R8 taper and a 40 taper toolroom mill. I never use mine except maybe for very light skim cuts.

PDW

 

[jmm03]

PDW,I wonder if you got an out of balance/bent one somehow? I used ours on a J head and it worked fine out of the box. As to the geometry, I have little frame of reference other than final surface finish, which on the aluminum pieces I used it on came out very good. I would have also recommended Glacern as a source, but they are certainly a couple of levels higher in quality and price and maybe overkill for a home shop. Jim

 

[PDW]

PDW,I wonder if you got an out of balance/bent one somehow? I used ours on a J head and it worked fine out of the box. As to the geometry, I have little frame of reference other than final surface finish, which on the aluminum pieces I used it on came out very good. I would have also recommended Glacern as a source, but they are certainly a couple of levels higher in quality and price and maybe overkill for a home shop. Jim

Ah, aluminium. I rarely machine that, nearly always steel and stainless.

Might be OK on the soft shiny metal. But I've come to dislike those triangular tips in both milling cutters and turning tools. They just don't do it for me.

PDW

 

[75sv1]

Bridgeport did make some 'smaller' mills. I remember less than a 3 ft table. Also, less cross slide. We had 3-4 in the first shop I worked at. One at another. They don't seem to get much love. I did like the one in the last shop. No power feeds. Others didn't use it much. Also, they didn't use the Mitsubishi fly cutter head on it. So, it stayed tight.

 

[gustafson]

While I respect tight spaces, ponder that space actually reserved for any bench mill[aside from the truly tiny] and that reserved for a short table[32 or 36 inch] short knee[9 inch] bridgeport
While harder to remove from a basement, it has been done often.
While I would personally stick to a V ram machine, even a round ram is probably nicer to run than any bench mill

 

[JST]

There are newer "bench mills" and older ones. Many older ones are decent, some not so much. Bridgeports are "standard", but older ones on the market are often beat up to the max.

You do not want to scrape a Bridgeport if you don't have to. I did a Benchmaster and that was plenty of work.

Most bench size do have really short tables. Get the longest table you can fit in the space, and at least put (closed) storage in the area that is "used up" under the table.

But even Benchmaster made a 36" table. I want one.