Gorton 0-16 for first mill?

I can get this mill for 1000 bucks.... it’s includes some extras which I hear is important as it uses different collets. Can someone verify that this machine uses a b@S #9 taper. If so could you then adapt to a er40 style collet system? Gorton Model 0-16 24"X 9" Table 230V 3Ph Vertical Milling Machine W/Work Lamps | eBay

Some of the older Gorton 0-16 mills had a Gorton taper instead of a B&S 9. I would recommend confirming the particular machine.

You can find B&S 9 to ER collet chucks, not sure about 40 specifically. But yeah, you just put the collet chuck in the spindle and it holds any tool in an ER collet.

If the mill is a Gorton taper, but has with it a larger collet, all might not be lost. You could probably find an ER chuck with a straight shank. But the machine would have to come with the Gorton collet—-it would probably take years to find one otherwise.

Gortons are awesome mills, but the 0-16 has a pretty small work envelope. The plus side is the 0-16 should have at least 6,000 rpm top spindle speed and some had a 10,000 option. So if you do a lot of really fine work with small cutters or single lip cutters they are awesome—but you aren’t going to rip like a 10k cnc mill. As an only mill for general use I might look for something more boring and normal sized for $1,000.

That being said, if I ever find a good priced baby Gorton, I would probably buy it

The mill comes with all the collects I can’t tell if it’s #9 by the pics can you

Looks like there’s a nice amount of tooling with collets. Being that it’s a o-16 it will most likely be the Gorton collet. I had a very similar Gorton 0-18a which was the same platform with a larger knee and it had a NMTB30 taper. Wish I never sold as it was smooth as can be and I had collected plenty of 30 taper tooling for it.

plumberpieco said:

Looks like there’s a nice amount of tooling with collets. Being that it’s a o-16 it will most likely be the Gorton collet. I had a very similar Gorton 0-18a which was the same platform with a larger knee and it had a NMTB30 taper. Wish I never sold as it was smooth as can be and I had collected plenty of 30 taper tooling for it.

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I guess the reason I’m thinking about it , it’s cheap, it comes with tooling and a vice and it’s 10 miles away. Would you choose this or an enco mill drill?

sasanifab said:

I guess the reason IÂ’m thinking about it , itÂ’s cheap, it comes with tooling and a vice and itÂ’s 10 miles away. Would you choose this or an enco mill drill?

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Ha, that’s really funny! There’s no comparison between the two The Gorton probably weighs around 1800lbs or more. Don’t let that small table fool you. If I recall HGR, where I got my 0-18 had It listed at around 2000lbs. Here are two pics I found of it. The side shot was after I sold it at its new home.


Now I really liked mine but understand that with the small table and non tilting or rotating head it’s work envelope is restricted. On the other hand it’s very rigid. I kept it on a skid to raise the working height.

sasanifab said:

I guess the reason IÂ’m thinking about it , itÂ’s cheap, it comes with tooling and a vice and itÂ’s 10 miles away. Would you choose this or an enco mill drill?

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I would choose the Gorton over the mill/drill. I looked at pics, no way to identify if collets are Gorton or B&S visually, but if its just 10 miles away you could fairly easily go look. Look up dimensions for B&S #9, take a caliper with you to measure.

I had one of those mill/drills years ago, it was a decent drill, sucked as a mill.

dalmatiangirl61 said:

I would choose the Gorton over the mill/drill. I looked at pics, no way to identify if collets are Gorton or B&S visually, but if its just 10 miles away you could fairly easily go look. Look up dimensions for B&S #9, take a caliper with you to measure.

I had one of those mill/drills years ago, it was a decent drill, sucked as a mill.

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I’ve decided to go a different direction, picking this up Thursday . R8 collet with Power Feed