Looking at a small mill to play with...

[Dud]

I have used mill-drills and combo machines.

For anything except very small jobs or things that a plain drill press could do, those machines will fight you.

The reason for a Bridgeport or clone is that they are rigid enough for bigger jobs, they are more adjustable and more easily adjustable and most of the cheap import tooling is Bridgeport size. A lot of that tooling is too big for a smaller machine so if you think you will save money with a smaller machine, you won't, you will probably spend more.

 

[joshb]

My current bridgeport was $1500. Its not a variable speed so it was overlooked by the people looking for machines from internet recommendations. I figure it had $7500 worth of tooling with it. The variable speed bridgeport sitting next to it was 10 years older and only came with a well crashed kurt vise and it sold for $3500. I think ive bought 4 real bridgeports and a kent and all were well tooled for under $2000. With a good machine you can always get your money back and with good skates, wood wedges and a crowbar you can put it wherever you want.

.....so you’ll sell it to me for $2000?

 

[Dusty Stevens]

.....so you’ll sell it to me for $2000?

If i run across another one sure!

 

[ebb]

If you had moved to south Florida you could have just used mine. Gary has been invited but I have decided he thinks the hogs will eat him if he comes over.

 

[JSH]

I am honest here, I pretty much know enough to be dangerous at this point.
My friend,teacher,mentor,hunting and shooting bud, retired tool and die maker has turned out some crazy stuff on his small Clausing mill. Forget the model, when I say small but it is under 1000lbs, probably around 7-800 pounds base and all.
A good set up and knowing what kind of cuts your machine will do goes a long way. Yes one may have to make several passes rather than one or two. The end results are of the same at the end.
Time is money in a production shop. I don’t think we are talking that here.
I looked at a slightly used import mill (1980’s)a few months ago. Lots of tooling and all it had ever been used for was wood and some plastics. My bud went with me, checked it over. It came with a lot of tooling but the machine had way to many “issues”. All were fixable, parts were available but scarce. Everything it needed could have been made, but once again I have projects.

Also to the OP. Don’t think by any means a brand new beautiful machine is ready to rock and roll right out of the crate. It will need some tweaking and it will have it’s quirks, 700 or 7000 pounds.

This bit of advice was given when I started looking for a lathe. Think of the largest work you have in mind, then take that times 2. Pretty much what I did, and in three years I have already had a few “too big” issues. The cool part is finding and figuring ways around that.

I still wish I had a little bench top lathe at times for small non critical parts. I am working on a chuck that fits in my 5C collet set up now. Cute little devil.

 

[Dud]

Yes, a Clausing is big enough to do some full size work and I think there are some Asian copies of those small machines but the prices are very high because there are more people with space issues than little knee Mills like that. You'll have to spend $3,000+ minimum to get a Clausing size machine. I've seen Bridgeport mills for $1,000 OBO on poor examples and decently nice machines around $1,500.

I don't think I would pull the trigger on a Clausing unless I had a very constrained situation, like I wanted to put a mill on a boat but couldn't deal with the weight of a Bridgeport. Also at that point I might look at a small horizontal mill instead.