New manual mill- Opinions needed

I need a new manual mill.
I currently have a 12 year old Microcut bridgeport clone with a 40 taper, quill, etc.


The Bridgeport head-style bed mills look interesting.

It would be pretty convenient for doing multiple keyways in 20' long 3" shafts.
How do they compare to a normal knee-style mill for rigidity etc?
Would they both be able to run 4 flut ⅝ or ¾" carbide endmills?

Also, has anyone ever run the larger Fort Worth bed mills?

The handle feeds look a bit awkward on them for fine work. Is it possible to drill and tap smaller holes on these beasts?

Thanks!

B-port clone bed mills are a whole order of magnitude more rigid than a standard Bridgeport. If you can lock out the tilt function on the head, they're even more rigid than a Haas.

Of course, compared to a VMC, they're slower than frozen snot; but if you're doing one-offs and prototype work...........they take the cake.

Would they both be able to run 4 flut ⅝ or ¾" carbide endmills?

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Absolutely. But I would still use variable flute tools for less harmonics.

ManualEd - why not a CNC bed mill with a friendly controller? I have one I'd like to sell that's 31" or so in X and 14" in Y - so not as big as that machine - but vastly less than $39K. (I'd take $7K) But I'm surely NOT the only person trying to sell such a machine used, and last time I checked new CNC bed mills are priced similarly to the manual machine you pointed to. (None of the machines I'm talking about have enclosures, or tool changers...)

That said, any bed mill will be way more suited than knee mill for things like 20' long objects since the table stays planted in Z making the outriggers you have to put under the stock much easier to manage. I've run 1" endmills in my machine.

ManualEd said:

Also, has anyone ever run the larger Fort Worth bed mills?

The handle feeds look a bit awkward on them for fine work. Is it possible to drill and tap smaller holes on these beasts?

Click to expand...

I've run basically this machine with a different sticker on the head. The counter-weighted head can be moved up and down quickly with just a pinky finger using the wheel on the front though there's very little "feel" doing that, or the fine feed handwheel on the right side can be engaged.

The geared feed setup is pretty clunky and it's easy to rapid by accident. The next model up looks to have variable feedrate which eliminates the awkward mechanical feed/rapid lever that sits right where you expect your table feed to. Max feedrate is also pretty low, maybe ~35ipm. Annoyances aside, it was a very solid smooth cutting machine.

It sounds like a big 50 taper mill is overkill for your uses though, and a smaller machine with a quill would be much handier for drilling/tapping. I enjoyed running prototraks, those aren't terribly expensive second hand and are pretty "fisher price, my first cnc" to set up and run. Plenty of similar offerings to be had too, and being able to tweak an offset and rerun the finish pass on a keyway in but the briefest of moments is quite nice.