Lathe and Mill
 

Alright im starting to look for a lathe and mill for my tool collection (no longer anywhere near my school's shop)

If you guys have any please post your experiences, where you got it, and cost :) lets share fellas.

Can I ask...where are you going to put them?

My dad has both. Used the hell out of his lathe but almost never used the mill.

Harbor Freight has a 3-in-1 unit for $700. I'm not suggesting it, just letting you know. I have no idea what it's like but from what little I've read on the Internet, they're not very good.

I took so much of what I had available back in high school metal shop for granted. I've been looking for someone that will do custom aluminum castings for an intake manifold. I'm think about paying a 16 yr old to do it for me.

BOSS 4 CNC Bridgeport from a local machinist. $2000 It was a pretty neat Mill, just never had much time to really use it.

Bridgeport 9x42 with power feed. Found it in someone's garage. $1000 complete with tooling.

Find some old US or Japanese Iron, you'll be happy you did. Much tighter than the chinese crap.

Mark

I have about 4,000 ft^2 in chicago for at least the next 2 years and I have my parents garage till i buy a house (which will probably happen before those 2 years are up


MarkP wanna part with one of those mills? Or if you find another one tell me!

I've used Jet lathes and they are nice, my uncle picked one up from a old machine shop for like $3k i think.
Key thing is going to be finding a good used setup, if you have local shops near you, go visit them. Alot of times they have equipment in the corner they don't use anymore because it's a little loose that they are willing to part with.

already sold em both.

Loki- any idea what size Lathe you are looking for?

There's a great resource for mini-lathes at this site: http://www.mini-lathe.com/ and they have a sister site at: http://www.mini-lathe.com/Mini_mill/Main/mini-mill.htm

I have a 7x12 lathe from Homier that I think was around $300. So far I have no complaints- it's been great for fabricating little things like BOV adaptors, suspension spacers, etc.

Grizzly Industrial is another good vendor for this sort of thing:
http://www.grizzly.com/products/cate...spx?key=460000
http://www.grizzly.com/products/cate...spx?key=460000

In the first link, the one in the upper-left is the exact one I have. Different color, but nearly all of the inexpensive lathes / mills at this price point are made by the same company, a Chinese manufacturer called Seig Industrial.

Joe thanks for the link, Im thinking im gonna do the 7x14 from micromark and upgrade the chuck to a 4inch. If i cant ifnd a used on locally, forutnatly theres a ton of machine shops closing down and i might just wait for a cheap lathe and mill to come across.

Thanks for the links.

Oops- that last link was wrong. Should have been: http://www.grizzly.com/products/cate...spx?key=480000 (link to Grizzly milling machines)

Also, here's a good resource for tooling: http://www.littlemachineshop.com/def...FQwzZAod6FRSSQ I've purchased several things from these folks, including a very inexpensive quickchange toolpost. They've also got lots of reasonably priced chucks and plates and other hard-to-find items.

If you're gonna spend money upgrading the chuck, don't mess around- be a man and buy the 5" version. ;)

These machines got a fairly good write up by an amature machinist.

https://www.smithy.com/products.php?cid=1