Milling machine or CNC router?

[dave siegler]

I have a sherline lathe that  I have made venturis, prop drive washers and spacers.  It gets use making bushings for my woodworking jigs.  I make some pens with it.  It does not get a lot of use, but I like having it.   

I am considering getting a small table top mill.  Looking a the sherline one because I can share some of the tooling.  Why?  I like messing around with glow engines, and it might be fun to have one.
Maybe make belcranks, combat motor mounts and convert car engines to airplane use.

Any other options?  The harbor freight looks like a mill kit, not a real mill, and the tooling looks odd, the Proxxon ones look like toys. 

Have access to a laser cutter and 3 printer

Other option sell the lathe and get a combo lathe mill.
Just add a milling attachment to the lathe.
Or get a CNC router. 
Looking to keep the mill under 1K$ with some tooling.

[Dick Pacini]

This is the machine I have.

http://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=3960&category=1387807683

[Wayne J. Buran]

Having been in the tooling business for 40+ years and now fortunately retired, I would humbly suggest you keep the lathe and add a mill to your shop. I found that combo machines don't always do everything you want to do. Combo machines are ok but you loose some versatility by not having seperate lathe and mill. Why would you want a high speed CNC router over a nice CNC mill. Just sayin.
Wayne

[Richard Entwhistle 823412]

Since you already own a Sherline lathe why not get their mill?  I own both and could not be happier.  I have digital read out on both and can hold .0005+/-  on almost any project.  I added a rotary table with a three jaw chuck, the same one that is on your lathe, on one end of the mill table.  I have not found a model project I can't hold and machine.  I ordered the combo package and spent less than $2800 for the mill and lathe with tons of tooling.  The digital read out is a huge plus.
Later
Richard

[Robert Zambelli]

I bought this one from Harbor Freight around ten years ago.
Still performing flawlessly.
Around $1200.

   Bob Z.

[GGeezer]

I know I'm spoiled rotten, I have a Bridgeport and do a lot of milling.
If you are serious about doing milling I would advise you to stay away from a round column mill-drill... it will drive you crazy.
Every time you have to raise or lower the head to accommodate different length cutting tools or tool holders, you lose center reference... not very handy.

I like the look of Dick's Little Machine Shop unit. Good price, easily adjusted spindle speed (no belts or gears to change) and best of all, a dove-tail column. It also accepts low cost easily purchased R8 tool holders. I can't see anything really bad about this machine.

Orv.

[dave siegler]

looking at this one

http://www.amazon.com/5400A-Deluxe-vertical-Mill-accessories/dp/B0002BK3PO/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1392125546&sr=8-6&keywords=sherline+mill

[Bob Reeves]

The LittleMachineShop mill Dick posted is 3 times the mill that Sherline mill is. With a lathe you can get away with a little flex, in a mill it's a killer and the Sherline simply isn't rigid enough.

[phil c]

Dave, you've got to decide what your're going to do.  A CNC router won't do what even the smallest column mill can do.  Along with a small lathe even the smallest column mill can do all sorts of small metal projects.  Any of the small column mills will do small parts to within a couple of thosandths, depending on how careful you are.  The round column "mills" are glorified drill presses.  Like Orv said, you have to plan your work flow very carefully because every time you raise or lower the drilling head it goes out of alignment and has to be carefully trammeled back into place.  There are workable fixes on hobby machining sites about using a laser pointer and a scale on the wall which work.  But it is a lot of extra hassle.

The biggest question to ask yourself is just how big you want to go.  A bigger machine is generally stiffer and more accurate.  More or less, doubling the size makes it four times as stiff.  A bigger machine has a bigger table and you can put two or more setups on the table and switch between jobs or tasks quickly.  Just like a lathe, the bigger machine can make quick work of taking big cuts.  Milling a 1 in. slot .05 inches at a time gets boring fast.  The Sherline is well built, but is more limited in oomph compared to sightly larger machines.

So get the biggest machine that will fit both the shop and the budget.  And figure tooling will quickly accumulate to 50% of the total cost.

[Steve Helmick]

Look for cast iron, weight matters! The more, the better.  I would at least look at Grizzly, in person if possible. http://www.grizzly.com/search/search?q=milling%20machine&cachebuster=6800544542621642  I bought a Grizzly 3" x 14" lathe...much like the Harbor Fright unit, but I figured the chance of getting parts was a lot better. I haven't had to test that theory.

I attached some pics. The "ring" picture is on a Bridgeport EZ Trak (I programmed & ran them for many years). They weren't real fancy, weren't great, but were adaptable to doing impossible stuff that a mega-buck CNC couldn't. Like this stupid ring. Wouldn't fit anything we had, so I was elected. That was NOT for Boeing!

For my last 5 years (seemed like 20), I ran this next thing, a Milltronics MB-40. "The Crank" was a part that I had to figure out how to make, because nobody else had any ideas. It worked pretty well, but the intent was to make 3, I think, and if they worked, then they'd go onto a 5 axis for a production run at many less hours of whittling. I tried to get them to let us fabricate it (weldment) for the first 3. Boeing said no. Booooo!

"WTF" was another Boeing thing. The office screwed the pooch right away, by getting in a piece of material with the grain going the wrong direction in one axis, and it got to me before I told them it was FUBAR.  Boeing took a few days to decide if that would be ok or not, so I had less time to get it made. It was not an airplane part, but a part of a lifting tool, IIRC. My scheme worked out pretty well. Oh, the spindle is running, and pretty fast. Luckily, I've forgotten much of this in the last few years....4 years come the middle of May! Hallelujah, I'm a bum!  Steve

[david beazley]

First let me say I am not a machinist nor did I sleep in a Holiday Inn last night, but I own a Sherline 4400 lathe and 2000 mill with DRO. When I decided I wanted to learn machining I did a lot of looking and research.  Mass is a good quality for machine tools, but as much as i would like to get "real" machine tools, I settled on Sherline for my uses.  I piddle around with models, so a Bridgeport mill and Southbend lathe would be great to own but space, time and money just don't allow at this time.  I like the idea that Sherline is an American company, and the owner is a modeler.  For what I do, they have more capabilities than I have skills.  I stay within their capabilities and don't try to move alot ov metal at one time.  Its a hobby, not a business and the more I use them, the more I appreciate them.  Also a rule of thumb for any machine tool is that you will spend 3 times the machine price in tooling!  I bought my lathe first then added the mill so there are shared tooling foe both.  My $0.02.

[Norm Furutani]

Something to be aware of if considering one of the Chinese mini mills. The feed dials on the Griz and Little Machshop are marked in thou of an inch. One rev is 1/16 th of an inch. The dial is marked 60 thou and then has a little pie shaped section of 2 1/2 thou. Not familier with the HF mill.

Micromark has a 50 thou per rev dials, I believe the only mini mill that has this. The good news is LittleMachineshop has a conversion kit for the other brands.

I have a converted Grizz and it's OK. When doing more precise work I use dial indicators in mag mounts.

Some also have plastic gear heads that will fail under heavy load.

They look similar and probably use the same castings but differ in features.

Norm

[phil c]

I wouldn't worry about the dial markings.  Nothing wrong with working in metric.  If you have a cheap, slightly programmable calculator you can prefigure how to calculate the number of dial markings to go for an inch measurement.  A common one is figuring out how many markings to go to remove say 0.1 in from the diameter.  Doesn't matter what the dial reads, the tool has to move 1/2 of the total amount you want to remove.  Half of it is on each side of the shaft or whatever, so the depth that is cut has to be 1/2.  On my lathe the figure is 317.5  Measure the diameter, subtract the new diameter and multiply by 317.5, which is the number of marks on the cross slide dial has to move.

I'm not a pro machinist like Steve, but I've found one you get the feel of the dials(basically how hard they have to turn to take up any backlash) it's not hard to hit a measurement within half a thousandth with maybe 2 tries.  For many things such as venturis, prop bushings, even rod bushings, that is close enough.  but the more careful you are, the closer you can get.

Phil C

ps- Dave B,  I certainly wasn't knocking the Sherline equipment.  For small stuff, which is very typical of a lot of modelling machining they work just fine.  It's just if you have projects in mind that might be too big, and you have space to fit, a larger, stronger machine can be had for not too much more.

pps- from friend's experience, don't bother with any of the 9x20 lathes.  They are way too flexible compared to the 7 x 10-14 micro lathes and really don't have much extra capacity.

[Eric Viglione]

pps- from friend's experience, don't bother with any of the 9x20 lathes.  They are way too flexible compared to the 7 x 10-14 micro lathes and really don't have much extra capacity.

Man, that's the truth. I have an ancient Taig micro lathe... came with about  40 tiny various size collets, didn't even come with a chuck, it was setup as a jewelers lathe. Small, but sturdy as the proverbial brick out house and can't imagine how it would even begin to flex. I bought a chuck and end drill for it, best little lathe I've ever owned.

[Phil Krankowski]

If you need a smallish working envelope a milling table on the lathe would serve quite admirably as a horizontal mill.  The downside is the attachment is probably near the cost of a separate machine unless you can score used in good shape.

Phil