This topic has been covered many times Chris try the forum search for milling machine you will find a lot of information.

I have a SX2p mill, it's been well used and I'm very pleased with it but dose need the small head support, a kit for this is available.

Bob

I would have a look around at as many mills as possible as depending what you want to machine can be limited by the height of the machine and drills for instance get longer with biger diamiter and how you hold what you hold material with also impinges as well. depending where you live there may be a club or society where you can actualy look at diferent machines and perhaps visit arcerotrade Leicester or Chester machine tools or any other supplier.

David

Re your space – 600mm is not a lot. 800mm is not even enough for the SX2P mill highlighted above.

Having a table of 400mm, with 330mm travel, plus the long-travel handle it won’t fit in an 800mm envelope. Setting it on the diagonal (of ~1100mm) likely wouldn’t be very satisfactory.🙂 285mm spindle-to-table distance rapidly decreases – once a chuck, drill and vise is involved. I generally use stub drills on my smaller mill.

A great small mill but still small. I do a lot of drilling operations on my mills, but I have still occasionally required a drill with more head-space.

Which Mill of which Lathe is one of the most asked questions for beginners.

Selecting a mill or lathe appropriate for your needs is a difficult task for those starting out in machining and is an expensive exercise. Especially if the wrong equipment is chosen.

There is a wealth of information on MEW but difficult to find for new members to the forum. Therefore, I would recommend that a special section for this be added to the site and a link to it be displayed on the home page so new members are advised of it. After reading this first, they could then ask for other information, without someone repeating what has already been posted.

Edited By Paul Lousick on 22/08/2023 08:06:13

A lot will depend of your 600-800mm space. If there is some clear bench space either side of that then you will get away with the table travel which often adds 50% to the stated width of the benchtop mills. If that is the case then you could get an SX3 size machine in there.

If you are tight up against a wall or other tall items then you are going to be quite limited to X1 size machines or an X2 size would do most of the work and removing the knob on the handwheel when longer travel is needed may just allow you to make use of it's full travel if you don't mind the odd scraped knuckle.

Edited By JasonB on 22/08/2023 08:20:53

Chris, have a look at my web page on milling machines it might help a bit!

John

Agreeing with what Paul says.

The Website FAQS covers many standard items like this and the common question about adding photos to postings. However, there is a lot of material in the FAQs and may be difficult for newcomers to see the wood for the trees and doubt if many bother to venture far into the dark forest! Also, there does seem to be more of an attitude these days looking for instant answers to everything ( Google world I suppose), and I admit to being as guilty as others at times. However, members of the forum are generous in their time and effort to reply regardless, even though you see the same info repeated time and again.

Just thinking out loud – would it not be possible for the web site team to configure things so that when a newbie joins they are directed to a 'checklist' of say the 10 most common questions, which they have to agree to? Before going more into the sort of idea that I have, it will be interesting just to get feedback on the concept – good or bad. If it is a possibility, I appreciate work would be required, but am confident that members would contribute, as I would be happy to

regards Mike.

Edited By Mike Hurley on 22/08/2023 10:39:53

Has anyone ever played with a Deckel?

Might you trade some of that American Bridgeport solidity for a bit of Continental, double-jointed flexibility?

When Gotteswinter starts twisting his Deckel horizontal table through all its' degrees of freedom I go a bit slack-jawed and drooly

If somebody wants to compile a what mill and what lathe guide then I'm sure Neil will happily post it as an article or make it a sticky in a suitable forum topic.

Would probably need two of each, one to cater for those wanting a new machine and another for those with a liking for old iron

Is 600 – 800mm square the maximum available, or is the table allowed to overhang?

My WM18:

• Stand 400mm wide x 580mm deep
• Tray 600mm wide x 680mm deep
• Table Width 1150mm (including handles)
• Max Right-Left table movement, 1744mm, including handles.

So a WM18 would nearly fit in the space, except the table overhangs by 275mm both sides, much more when the table is traversed. On one side my table projects across a walkway, ion the other it overhangs an area used for storage.

The WM16 and WM14 are much the same design scaled down Can anyone provide their Max Right-Left table movements?

It was size that decided the machine I bought: a WM18 was the biggest I could fit in.

Dave

Yep, there's another one here too

Comes fully fitted out with Power feed, digi readout, R8 taper, 8" R/T, 5" vise, tilting vise, variable angle plate, angle plate, collet chuck with met/imp collets Er 24 collets, Stevenson hex block collet holder, carbide tooling, hss cutters etc etc.

It too is eight years old, bought for my seventieth birthday but if its had a total of three months work in the time since it's been overworked! virtually all of the tooling and RT are unused

Reason for sale is age related and space requirement.

It has to go soon