Factor in the cost of end mills, vice and possibly a rotary table, coolant system, DROs (Digital Read outs), centre finder, set of parallels and some coolant. It all adds up I am afraid.

With regard to tooling we have been there before. have a look at this advice 

Warco have a sale on. Get the most expensive you can afford and use code SUMMER15 for extra 15%. So that looks like the 16B.

At least then you can remind yourself why you got the 16B… because it was a bargain!

(I got a SIEG from Arc but it the size of the WM18. I think all the big suppliers in UK are good. I have used the limits of my machine but still glad it isn’t bigger. 16 would have been too small for me.)

+1 for the advice to buy a Sieg from Arc Euro, for the advice that will ,be available.

How often will you use a tilting head? If rarely; rigidity should be more important factor.

A Rotary Table can be used for a variety of purposes, and will certainly allow you to mill work at an angle,as well for other puroses, hole / slot angular spacing (I use mine for gear cutting)

If a Rotary Table will not do what you want, from time to time, you can buy / make wedges to go under work.

Howard

I’ve got a WM16B – I’ve found it very satisfactory for the price.

The tilting head feature isn’t something that you’re likely to need often, but if you do, it’s there. It isn’t difficult to tram it true, and once done it stays there.

Changing the belt speed could be easier, but it’s much quieter than the 2 speed gear arrangement on some mills.

The advice Bazyle links to is pretty reasonable, though really you’ll need a minimum of four collets – 10, 8, 6 and 4mm, which will cover the most commonly used end mills.

Don’t spend lots of money on posh cutters. Get a cheap set like these to begin with:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334494436594

They’re actually OK, and you won’t cry if when you chip one.

+1 for Sieg from Arc Eurotrade. I have one of their smaller mill. I’m very pleased with it and their service both before and after purchase is excellent.

Robert.

On 28 August 2024 at 20:55 teucher Said:

I looked at the seig sx2, it looked good but at1.6k is a tad pricier than say the warco vm16. I will do some more searching and maybe compare specs etc. If anyone has more suggestions i would like to hear them. Thanks for the input guys.

👍

Were you buying two?

The latest Version is the SX2PG and that is £820 so well within budget and plenty to spend on tooling. You could even just manage the larger SX2.7 at £1420 if the budget stated did not include tools.

Have a look at the two articles at the top of the workshop section, they use the SX2.7 to do the cuts and video, it will give you an idea of what they can remove metal like. I’ll add a third part later today. Also note that the 2.7 is direct drive to spindle so no belts to change or gears to make noise or strip.

If you have CAD and are reasonably skilled it may be worth doing a space diagram to verify that the mill you intend to buy actually has enough room to easily handle the jobs you propose to do.

Continually working around insufficient space is a truly miserable experience.

I got rid of my first two mills, a BCA and large size square column import, and went up to a Bridgeport purely for space reasons. The square column mill was largely equal to the Bridgeport in stiffness and machining capacity but it simply lacked space to easily handle the work I ended up doing

Which ended up rather different than I originally planned! Turned out I’m not a model maker. Happy being Home Shop Guy working in 12 inch to the foot scale.

As David Halford mentioned above the gotcha with a mill is that everything has to fit inside the work envelope so once you’ve added work holding underneath and tooling stick out on top the actual room for the job is a lot less. Don’t underestimate setting up space. Much easier if you can crank things sideways enough so you don’t have to work under the head. Probably the thing that really confirmed that I had to go up to a Bridgeport form my short table square column one where setting up had to be done under the head rather than out to one side then crank back.

Tilting heads need a decently long table if they are to be regularly useful. With a short table by the time you have the job mounted up and allowed for the tool stick out the useful angle of tilt can be severely restricted because the table can’t go far enough sideways. In practice about 10° or 15° maximum on my short table square column one without risky levels of creativity in work holding. Flipping the thing right over to horizontal is the province of big, by home shop standards, brutes like Bridgeport and Beavers et al and even then there isn’t much space.

Fixed heads, hopefully with more vertical lift and short drills to give room for a tilting work holder are best for smaller machines. Pity it’s hard to find comprehensive sets of short drills. For model making purposes you don’t need the length of conventional jobber drills above around 1/4″ 6 mm (ish). I reckon it’s pretty rare for model makers using bench top sized mills to drill more than 2″ / 50 mm deep using the mill.

Rather than splash out on a brand new machine far better to find a decent used example to get your feet wet without risking a huge loss if the choice turns out to be the wrong one for you. Generally decent used mill prices are pretty static so you will get back pretty much what you paid. Just be out collection and installation costs. Worth it to get a much better idea of what you actually want as opposed to what you thought you wanted.

But I would say that ‘cos it was third time right for me. (well near enough I still prefer a Beaver or TS but I haven’t the ceiling height).

Clive