If you have the room and can afford a bigger mill, do so. You run out of room fast on a mill, even as large as the one I have and when you go that small it gets tiny fast. Whatever you get, make sure it has a R8 spindle and not a MT3. If you do need to get a mill that small look at the Sieg X3, it is a lot better machine. http://www.mini-lathe.com/X3_mill/X3rvw/X3.htm
Figure a lot more in tooling than just getting a couple end mills. You will need clamp kits and vises, collets or tool holders. And when you buy end mills do not cheap out and buy the crappy TiN coated things at harbor freight. Do yourself a favor and buy name brand quality end mills, you dont need carbide, HSS will be fine. For aluminum you need cutting lube of some kind. I use Bijur spray mist units on my cnc mill and lathe. They work well and can be found used on ebay for pretty reasonable prices. If you want a cnc mill, buy a cnc mill. By the time you spend the time and money on ballscrews and everything else to retrofit a manual machine you will be right there with buying one complete and ready to run. This especially applies to the larger bridgeport mills, when you retrofit a bridgeport you just killed the value of the machine. The best deal for a cnc mill is to get a used cnc knee mill like a bridgeport boss or interact with a dead control and either fix the control or install a new one. The mills can be often had for scrap prices. -Jerry > On Mar 2, 2015, at 12:25 AM, Jason Barnett <[email protected]> wrote: > > I have been toying with the idea of getting a cheap desktop "mini mill" for > some time. I think I am finally ready to pull the trigger and buy a harbor > freight 44991 mini-mill. It's reasonably priced for the little bit that I > will ever use it and there are a ton of people that have hacked them into CNC > machines. This sounds like a fun project sometime down the line. > My question is this, is there anything I am missing that should change my > mind? I know it is a very low end mill, but for my needs (cutting notches in > aluminum extrusion, making aluminum stepper motor brackets, etc) I think the > accuracy is good enough. I can get one for ~$500 delivered + a bit for some > mill ends. > Has anyone had experience with this mill or with doing the CNC conversion > that can give me an opinion? > _______________________________________________ > dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list > [email protected] > http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber _______________________________________________ dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list [email protected] http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber
