Toolroom Mill - Thoughts?

Looking to buy a toolroom mill for doing repair work in a manufacturing facility. May also do a little custom work in the future, but nothing high production so far.
Currently have a Haas TM-1P in my sights because of its sizable table, a little bigger then the VF-1. What are some pros of the Haas? Cons? Any decent ones for sale by you guys? Better options for an equivalent price?

I have heard some people say that a 6" vice hardly fits on the table of the TM-1P, any merit to that? We couldn't compromise for a smaller vice, 6" is what we would need.
Any insight is appreciated, thanks in advance everyone.

I love the TM’s. I have a 1P and 3P. Very simple machines with little to go wrong. Just grease it and run it. 6” vise fits fine. About the hardest I run it is a 1.00” inserted drill in 316L and it does great even without thru coolant.


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Where I used to work I bought a Hass Toolroom Mill and a lathe for this type application. The lathe was used all the time but the mill not so much.

Regarding the vise we put a Kurt DX6 on it and it was tight. I think we had to cut the hex shaft off a little to clear but it worked.

The thing that limited the use of the mill there was not so much the machine itself but the fact that the conversational programming was not very good with the mill. There were not really any cnc programmers there and they were very busy with other little jobs that there really wasn't time to get proficient with it. The guys used the lathe all the time using the conversational programming but they said that what the mill had was not very good. I don't know first hand.

Take a look at Hurcos Toolroom style mills as well. Fantastic control interface and quality machines.

Stay away from Prototrak.

Better ask the boss if he has $50K to spend on toy for you before you get worried about vise size.

BSCustoms said:

Take a look at Hurcos Toolroom style mills as well. Fantastic control interface and quality machines.

Stay away from Prototrak.

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I guess I would have to disagree with that, I use a bed style Prototrak at work and have been happy with it. It won't interpolate bearing fits but for clearance holes and corner radii it works great. It isn't the most ridgid machine either. But in my opinion the open cell layout, standard mill hand wheels, hand feed quill, and easy programing more than compensate for it's lack of rigidity and circular interpolation accuracy.

Of course it also depends on your needs and experience.

We had decent luck with the Sharp knee mills with Accurite controls on them at the old shop. There has been one for sales around here for like $13k for a long time, which is a steal. One thing is they are very tall - we needed to build risers to use them and everyone in that shop is 5'8 to 6'1 or so - it isn't like we were all short.

Brand new they were around $44k but they are well built Taiwanese machines.