What size, capability and price range are you looking at?
There are some UK suppliers but price/size ratios aren't particularly good.
Have you considered second hand small industrial stuff with a converter from Transwave?

For a CNC mill, assuming you don’t want to convert your own, there are three choices:

1. Buy a hobby level machine, usually with stepper motors

2. New industrial – mega money

3. Secondhand industrial – a lot for the money but you’ll need to be knowledgeable about electronics when it goes wrong

I bought a Tormach CNC mill from the US; high end hobby with a readily available 4th axis, which I’ve used a lot. The original Mach3 software was messy and the 4th axis functions didn’t work properly. The new PathPilot software from Tormach is much better.

There don’t seem to many secondhand hobby CNC machines for sale; I suspect they’re still quite rare in the home workshop. And most people who have them keep them.

Andrew

Hi Kevin

For a good milling machine if you can find a Denford Triac that has not had industrial use you may find it has a work envelope to suit your needs.
The other Denford cnc mills are a bit short on distance spindle to table, but depends on the type of work envisaged if these would be suitable.

Another cnc mill is the Emco F1, all cast iron with tapered and adjustable gibs, very capable machine in original form for 2-1/2D work but for 3D you would need to change the control system.
Max working envelope is X 200 and Y 100 with 200 Z, quite a bit less than the Triac.

Emgee

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To pick up on a couple of points made by Barrie:

Correct, the Tormach is CNC only, no handwheels. That didn’t worry me as I only use it for CNC milling. As yet I haven’t used the MDI or inbuilt wizards in anger. For manual milling I’ve got vertical and horizontal mills available.

The Tormach 1100 spindle is 1.5hp, same as my Bridgeport. The Tormach is happier running smaller cutters at higher rpm and feedrates than the Bridgeport although the metal removal rate is similar. As the Tormach motor runs from a VFD it doesn’t have full power available at low rpm; hence smaller cutters at higher speeds.

As said a lot will depend upon the usage. A lot of my parts are 2.5D or 3D, but the 4th axis, along with a high speed (24000rpm) spindle, allows me to make intricate parts with small cutters, like these bevel gears:

Andrew

I did look at the Tormach speeder, but it's quite expensive and is reputedly rather noisy. That's important to me as I live in a very quiet rural location. I ended up with a 24000rpm induction motor and VFD. I bought the demo package from Arc when they stopped selling the items. I had to make a bracket to hold the motor onto the mill spindle:

Of course it's difficult to swap between main and high speed spindles within a job, and the high speed spindle is not quick change, so prefilled tool tables can't be used. But so far that hasn't been a problem making small parts only needing a single cutter.

Andrew

Let's hope they don't use Haas 'horsepower'.

Andrew

As mentioned I don't use tool tables when using the high speed spindle. But for the main spindle I make extensive use tool tables as the tool change system is repeatable. Initially I used to manually change the Z value each time I changed a tool. But that became tedious rather quickly, and led to some "interesting" tool crashes when I forgot to change the value. So I invested in an electronic tool height gauge that enters the value direct into a tool table. The original Mach3 used with the Tormach was poor on tool tables, and only saved them if you remembered to do it explicitly on exit. The new PathPilot system is much better, it saves automatically.

Andrew