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Does anyone know the maker of this horizontal mill?

Kevin T

Stainless
Joined
Jan 26, 2019
I see that this maybe available soon so I wanted to do some research on it to see if it is something I can use.
It's a no. 25 model but I haven't been able to find a similar one to learn more about it or who made it. Thanks for any help.

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Ah ha...I did find it. It appears to be a Becker No.25

Becker Mill.JPG

Does anyone have any experience with one or words of wisdom to consider for a guy looking for a mill?
 
WELL! The first question do you have a BP style mill now? If this one if cheap and you have the room could prove useful. Looks to be a bit of a Franken mill with that car trans mounted on it. A big issue can be a slow enough spindle speed a 3" dia. HSS cutter wants to be run at 100 RPM or less depending on material being cut. Learned that lesson real quick with the SAJO I had. Cutters are very pricey new compaired to end mills. Hopefully it comes with a useable selection of cutters. As a only mill ??? If the spindle is something fairly common a collet chuck would let you use endmills for many ops.
 
Kevin,
I have a vertical and a horizontal. Any time I can use the horizontal, that's where the work goes. New cutters are indeed pricey, but you can take chances on ebay and come up with usually more than 50% usable. May not work with your shipping costs though
 
The reason Bridgeport mills and their copies are so popular is that they are so diverse in their capabilities, like the old saying "Jack of all trades, master of none".

My first mill was a vertical fixed quill type, but at my job I had only a horizontal antique B&S flat belt mill similar to the one in the photos.
Neither of them had a sensitive feed, and that is a huge disadvantage. Neither of them had the ability to use the power feed or the handwheel to judge the pressure being used to drill in other words.

I can see an advantage for Horizontal's in cutting keys, especially with a long enough Y travel to have 3 or 4 different sized cutters (Same diameter but different widths) on the arbor, and move the table in Y to preset positions to cut different sized keys with the shafts being held in a centering vise.
But I've never seen anyone use one that way, plus even then a vertical BP type would likely be the "go to" mill most of the time.
But then I'm not an authority of any kind.
 
WELL! The first question do you have a BP style mill now? If this one if cheap and you have the room could prove useful. Looks to be a bit of a Franken mill with that car trans mounted on it. A big issue can be a slow enough spindle speed a 3" dia. HSS cutter wants to be run at 100 RPM or less depending on material being cut. Learned that lesson real quick with the SAJO I had. Cutters are very pricey new compaired to end mills. Hopefully it comes with a useable selection of cutters. As a only mill ??? If the spindle is something fairly common a collet chuck would let you use endmills for many ops.


I thought that was some kind of transmission adaptation! I am having trouble finding out anything about the spindle or much about the unit online. That could also help sway my decision if I could mount cutters in there. It's an auction with no inspection possible and the auctioneers think it is a "GE lathe" because the motor is a GE! :eek: Could probably get it fairly cheap but if I can't use it how I want it would be a wasted effort and then I'm stuck with it.
 
Becker No. 25 Horizontal Miller

Lots of pictures on that page and more general information to be found as well.

As John called out above, it is missing the back gear so you will not be able to get the slow speeds. I think that would be a pass for me though if you have the means you could certainly make one.

I think for a first mill a horizontal might not be the best choice and this one in particular might not be the right choice. Said another way, your first mill should be ready to go and easy to work with. Then you can rebuild an older mill. I certainly would've benefited from that mindset.

Disclaimer: If it is dirt cheap and you've got gobs of space, get it. If nothing else it would be a fun project one day.
 
I really appreciate the info and knowledge that you guy shared about this machine. I will proabably take a pass on it since I do not want to spend a lot of effort for a machine with a small envelope of return at this point. The transmission adaptation was cool though yeah? lol
 
some back ground, many manufactures made similar mills and were made in large quantities because they were intended as production machines, ie you bought and set it up for doing one operation, ie cutting a flat on a casting, day in and day out. so they were not though of as general purpose machines.
 
A horizontal is just a vertical laid down....... stick an end mill in and put the work upright. Did that for years.

Nothing beats a horizontal for moving metal. Back gear is needed for heavy work, though. Good news is horizontals cut gears nicely. Use a dividing head, or rig an indexer using any convenient size gears of the correct tooth count (or 2x, etc).... change gears are a good place to look.

Looks solid, nice big overarm.
 








 
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