suggestions on getting a mill?
 

i've been looking to getting a 'cheap' mill in the UK, does anyone have any suggestions for a suitable one for wb milling, or things to look for maybe? I really don't know much about mills atm, but looking to learn so any help at this point would be appreciated.

At the moment i'm considering this..

http://www.chesteruk.net/Conquest%20...cification.htm

or the champion mill on the same site, either of these of ny use?

Personaly I would'nt spend that kinda money for a mill just to make waterblocks, I know it goes against the grain considering the site, but why?. What else would you use it for?. Can you afford to buy it (and forget about it when the water bug wains?). If so get the Eagle30 :p ...

Have you looked on e~bay or the like for second hand mills?. Machine auctions (the real thing "1guinee 2guinee,blah blah blah BANG!"). I'm sure there are sites to find the nearest auction to you...

Mills are good for lotsa stuff, but if you're not "into" making stuff with you hands and buidling things, it might take more effort than you want. But if you love to make "stuff" finding uses for a mill can be endless. Waterblocks might just be an excuse to get one. On the other hand, if you just see cool WBs people made with a mill, and want to make your own - it might be a little far fetched. (especially in the cost justiication area)

MadDogMe has an excellent point about auctions, remember older != crappier, lots of old equipment is high precision, and you can get the power you need for a fraction of the cost - keep in mind, replacement parts and their availability when you buy such a machine used.

As to those two milsl you mentioned, the site has a rather... qualitative analysis of how good the mills are. I have no experience with either of those, and I think that's what you'll really need - because the simple featureset is somethign you already know if you need, since you're the one who knows what you'll be doing.

[EDIT: Aww shit thanks a million pippin88 you're exactly right, believe it or not, I typed != then erased it somehow thinking along the lines of if versus iff, and stupid Computer Science mixing with Philosophy courses... and then I just made it totally wrong.]

more of an excuse to get a new toy tbh, got lots of things i could use a mill for which atm i just look at buying instead of making.

but yeah, was more along the lines of will it have enough power, are the max rpms just gonna end with me spending more on broken bits..will i discover that the bits are really obscure and hard to find, or perhaps something mundane that i should of spotted like (i dunno) the handwheels are shoddy or something *shrug*.

Basically i need help in making sure i don't buy a lemon at this point, sure i'll research and look around.. still some words of wisdom/caution always helps if its available :)

As for ebay etc, been watching the available to UK side of it for a few weeks now, still not seen a mill come up (compared to the US ebay which is positively packed with em). But yeah its finding the rw auctions thats the tough part, maybe i'm just not trying hard enough :]

What Khledar meant was older != crappier. (older does not equal crappier).

I got a second hand mill for $450 US including mill bits, collets and a nice drill collet (+ table and bunch of other junk).

It is plenty powerful for what I need (1HP). While there are a few things that could be better, it is a much better buy than the 1750US we were looking at for a new toy mill.

A good manual mill will likely weigh a lot. You can make heavy stuff with a light mill. Copper will eventually give a light mill trouble if you don't take care.

I think that that looks like a very solid mill, at a reasonable price.

If you've got the time and patience to make use of it, then go ahead, by all means. I totally understand the attraction of buying new powertools as toys as well :)

A few things to consider first.

1. I paid a proffessional machinist to make my block, its not as pricey as you might think. And if you're working on just making waterblocks for yourself, you might save money and time by drawing up designs, and paying to get them made.

Of course, you do lose a small amount as satisfaction because you havn't actually made it yourself, but in my opinion, its a fair trade.

2. Have you been making blocks for a while? My first dozen or so blocks were made with a hand drill and other hand tools. I've recently got my hands on a drill press, which helps, and it was only £20.

Bladerunner started out on a drill press, and made some outstanding blocks, #rotor makes some of the finest blocks around with a drill press. Hoot from overclockers.com makes some very nice blocks without a mill.

My point is that you don't need to have a mill to make some really nice blocks, and if you're just getting into block making ( you might have been making blocks for years, i have no idea ) then you might want to consider trying a few cheaper construction methods first, before splashing out big bucks on a decent mill.

EDIT - If you've never used a mill before, and want to have a go, see if your local college does a part time course. A friend of mine paid about £80 for a 10 week course, 2 hours every thursday night, and he got to use some really top level machines, and had proper tuition on how to use them. His final project was a spiral design waterblock. He had a lot of fun, and even ended up with a wierd qualification of some kind :) ( not worth the paper its written on tbh, and he's got a law degree anyway :D )

Might be an idea for you though, see if you like it before you drop £600 on something you might hate.

At the end of the day, if it'll make you happy, then go for it. This is a hobby afterall, god knows I've spent that much cash on golfclubs before, and more. I spend about double that every year just on club membership.

If its fun, then why not, but think about how you might be able to save some money.


p.s. If you do buy it, can I have a go ;)

I have come across several second hand UK based mills for sale, but they all needed a 3 phase power supply, i don't know why, they cant draw that much power!! There are none about at the mnute though!!

I am planning up a design for my first block and would really love to get a mill, but i figured i'd give it ago with a bench drill to start off, far cheaper and i see if im still intersested after that. A bench drill is also more practical as a general DIY tool as well.

I suggest givin a bench drill ago to start rather than a mill, unless you are an experience metal worker. It seems however that most people in "the industry" are able to blag tool time from their workplace to do their blocks.

@GTA that course idea sounds pretty good, i may make some plans up and see if i can use it as my "project" on te course!! are there any free CAD packages about? (i like to be legal! ;) )

Kristian

I'm not sure about free packages.

I bit the bullet and bought a copy of autocad 2000.

2002 and 2003 versions cost loads, but I picked up 2000 with a genuine license for £80.

Still trying to get the hang of 3D, but I was able to do some totally accurate 2D drawings, and the program even draws the measurements on for you. Invaluable when I was giving the plan to the machinist, it wasn't made using CNC, but i think he etched it out on the copper first and then just cut away.

Best bit, if you're making a drill press block, and fancy trying something like a #rotor block, is that you work in real size, so you can draw something up, and print it out as a template.

You just use the program to mark where the centres of the holes are, print it out, stick it to the top of the block, and drill where you've marked.

Something to try anyway :)

Re: suggestions on getting a mill?
 

Stay away from them both. They don't have enough Y travel. Once you put the vise on your going to be out of room. You should get one with at least 6" of Y travel (they seem to call it cross travel) which is 152.4mm.

As said I got by for a long time with a poor pillar drill mounted next to a very dead lathe. It was pretty crap but better than the one I didn't have!. Mostly I'd just not bother to use it and work out ways to make stuff with hand tools only.

Having a proper mill now though is great and allows so many more possibilities. I bought A Sip 30 Mill, (which appears to go under many other names in different parts of the world, (Rong Fu for instance), and by the time you've added all the extras you'll need like a collet chuck and mill bits it ends up at just over £1000, (including Vat). As far as proper mills goes it's entry level if truth be told, but it is strong robust and has all the features you need for water-block making. If looked at closely you can see it is built to a cost, (it's a fact that £1000 IS cheap when talking about real mills), but it's new and single phase.

http://www.zerofanzone.co.uk/picture.../mill_001s.jpg

It's much bigger than it appears in pictures, (that's a TI4600 on the mill bed), weighing in at almost 400lbs (180kg) more than two times my weight.

I'm updating my site atm so should have a little more about this in a mill article on it soon, (next few days). It is a hobby and can get expensive like most hobbies if you let it, and it wont stop at buying a mill because you'll need a proper lubrication/cooling set-up, material, more and more milling bits, etc.......... now I could do with a rotary table and a better vice....... it goes on and on.

Cheers for that GTA, £80 isn't to bad i suppose, i'll have a hunt around!

Nice mill as well Bladerunner, i was always curious how much it cost you when you first put it up on your website, £1000 is a bit more han i was expecting though!!! #

Ya made your decision yet
logosmani? If you get amill, can you post piccies up of it whe it arrives,

Cheers,

Kristian

Its a fact that Proper mills are not cheap, and £1000 IS cheap for a proper mill, (even if it could be debated whether the Sip30 truly qualifies as a "proper mill"?). Imo anything lesser than the Sip is just a pillar drill with an X/Y table, this will be evident when milling copper with any of them, some may work fine initially but will they last? how fast could you mill and how deep?.

I could quote the Sip30 at a retail price of £799 + vat if you prefer but that's only sugar coating the pill if like me you can't claim the vat back. It's also a fact you'll have to buy a selection of milling bits and a proper collet chuck with a selection of collets if you want to mill as opposed to just drill. At the end of the day it will cost if you want to do it right. ;)

nah, still looking about and listening.. getting a lot of useful information from u guys about what i do need.. wanna get this one right :)

PS. thx all :]

here's what I can do, and I don't even have a pillar mounted drill :(

http://www.liex.dk/artikel_pics/proj...erhoved_09.jpg

You realy can make great things with almost nothing...

...But a mill would realy be great...

How did you manage to do that? What are the insides?

I take it that's the 'forward and backward' direction, not side to side. Would'nt that be more important on a CNC mill? where you want to mill both directions in one 'programming pass'?. With a hand mill you can just turn the piece around and use the side to side directions instead no?...

hara:
you can see it here

or you kan see more here: liex.dk, but my site is in danish... sorry...:)

Oh, sh*t!
Not even a drill press! I was already impressed before You mentioned that.
Where do You buy Your copper? Jönköping/Sweden isn´t too far from Odense/Denmark, right?
regards
Mikael S.

Yeah you don't even have to use any power tools, It could even be done with a hammer & chissel if you have enough patience. A lot of my early stuff was done without using a pillar drill simply because the pillar drill I had was such a pain to use.

kio_liex looks very nice and similar to a GPU block I made for a GF4,

http://www.zerofanzone.co.uk/pictures/jpg/xp750gpu4.jpg

At that time I had no mill and just the channeling was done with the pillar drill.

The point is you will soon get tired of doing it without a pillar drill and then a mill, and it will prevent you from doing more complex thin walled blocks. If you plan to get stuck in & make more than just a few basic blocks then a mill is the only way to go as I see it. ;)

:cry:
Replaced the old rustworthy Opel (got it rammed on my way to work). Living on 0.4 € a day this week (not kidding). Mill dropped several positions on my shopping list.
Will see what hope next months salary brings to the pillar drill topic. And flame torch.
regards
Mikael S.

BladeRunner:
It was your design, that got me started, it looks great...

I'm going to make a head for my next GPU/VPU... maybe a 9800 pro...

But your right, a mill will do wonders, but they are expencive...

msv:
I bought the copper in Odense, that's in the middel of Denmark...

Not always. If your peice is to big you wouldn't be able to mill the middle of it. You could mill a 1/3rd of each sidde and not be able to get the middle 1/3rd. 6" is a bear minimum IMO. Mine has 7" and it just bearly cuts all sides of a 2" wide peice of material because the vice takes up most of the travel. You can always just try and clamp the peice directly to the table to but it needs to be very secure. But if your going to piss away that much cash you just as well get something good.