A good milling machine???

C of Ga,

 

I am not familiar with the Grizzly table top mill.  How big is the table and how much travel does it have?  If you only intend to mill small pieces that the table travel will accommodate, it may be adequate for your use.  I have a couple of milling machines in my shop.  One is an antique Brown & Sharp No.0 Horizontal mill with a vertical head and a power longitudinal feed on the table.  Right now it is set up to machine H beams for catenary poles from 1/4" square brass bar stock.  (Special Shapes no longer offers 1/4" square H or I beams)

 

The other is a relatively small manual Rockwell vertical mill that came out of a local high school that closed down its machine shop class.  The Rockwell can do anything I want to do with a milling machine and I have machined locomotive frames with it.  It has sufficient table travel so that I can set up the parts for a steam locomotive frame in a fixture that I made for machining frames and mill the entire frame without moving the workpiece on the table once it is mounted. I use this machine every week to machine brass coupler mount adapters for 3 rail to 2 rail conversions.

 

Most table top mills do not have a "knee"which provides the vertical z axis motion by moving the work surface up and down with a micrometer setting.  To set the depth of cut on a mini mill you usually have to lower the quill (spindle and tool) in relation to the table.  I had one of these "mill drills" for a while and did not like that feature.  Look around on the internet for a good used machine in your area. You may come across an Atlas or Rockwell that will do anything you might ever want to do with a milling machine.  With many commercial machine shops converting to CNC tooling there are a lot of good older manual machines out there that will serve a hobby machinist quite nicely.

 

Good luck with your machining efforts.  The ability to machine your own parts opens up a whole new set of modeling opportunities and machining can become a hobby in itself.  My machine tools are in use every week of the year.  I cannot imagine pursuing the hobby without them anymore although I did so for many years.

 

Joe Foehrkolb

Baldwin Forge & Machine

Smallest practical mill for O Scale is a Benchmaster.  It is also all I have room for.  I would kill for the space for a Rockwell or a Bridgeport.

 

Unimat-size tools will not do.

 

Opinion.

CofG, I looked up the mini milling machine in the 2012 catalog, and it lists the table travel as 4"x 7-5/16"... this seems a bit small for machining a diesel frame in O scale, at least to me.  As Joe pointed out, the table & travel need to be large enough to handle the projects you intend to do.  The table size is listed as 3-5/8"x 15-3/4", which may be a bit small depending on how big of a diesel frame you intend to machine (I don't know if you want to scratchbuild GE 44 Tonners or UP DD40X's).  Not to say you can't work around those limitations, but since you are looking to purchase a mill, you might want to give some consideration to a somewhat larger one, depending on the size of the projects you intend to do.  As far as Grizzly products, I have no complaint with their quality - in fact, I have a 1005z Mill/Drill that is a few years old and has been a great machine. 

 

Just my two cents, hope it gives you some useful information... let us know what you decide!

Look here at the HiTorque Mini Mill:

 

http://littlemachineshop.com/default.php

 

I have a HF mini-lathe and get most of the tools, bits, etc. I need for it from here.

+1 on finding a full size used mill. For while you could find Bridgeports with readouts for $1000-1200 around here. Mine cost $500 without readouts. Obviously you will need the room and transporting it may cost nearly that much. Besides accurate Z-axis settings it also has Z axis drive (J head) for boring operations.

Like most tools you'll find many other applications for it once its in your shop.

 

Pete

Always buy the biggest you have the room for and can afford. You can do accurate work on a non-knee mill. Keep in mind that a mill with no tooling is worthless. Make sure you put aside part of your budget for tooling. I have used one of the large Grizzly bench tips and was happy with its operation. it's about like any other Chinese mill. Ken the guy from AR

Thanks for all the responses. If I can squeeze out the funds I may go with one slightly larger than the Grizzly Mini due to some of the answers given here. James, my diesel frames will only be four axle units. Like my steam engine preferences, I like smaller locos ( 2-8-0, 4-6-0, Light 2-8-2 and 4-6-2 ). Now I do like a heavy 4-6-2 but still favor the smaller branch line motive power. I would like to build frames for GP7/9, GP38, and maybe RS3 locos. If I get good at building diesels, I might take the plunge and scratch build a steamer or atleast kitbash one.

 

CofG

"The Right Way"