Is this a good mill to get
 

On my very limited budget i was looking at this MICRO MILL/DRILL from harbour freight for $259.99 USD

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/pho...7199/47158.gif

Is it worth the money? I had a 9" drill press but returned to the store..
I didn't find the rise would be big enough once i put in a Vise let alone a X-Y Table.
so now i'm in the market...
Is this good?

Anybody ????

What I don't like about it is the Y travel is only 4". Other than that it isn't all that bad I guess... Also that has less rise than a 9" drill press.

Adequate. The original manufacturer, Sieg, makes decent mills at a good price.

You can get more detailed information from the Yahoo CNC conversion group.

A good source of parts is LittleMachineShop.

Looking at most blocks I havn't seen to many with a larger width then 4"
The 9" drill press i returned would have a lot less clearence once i put a vise in it...

Is there a better bang for the buck?
My mom is going to US (I'm from Canada) next weekend and will pick it up for me.
If there is something that is better for the same relitive price... I'd like to hear the your accumulated wisdom on this. I took machine shop in Highschool eons ago...

Secondly if i go with this mill, since i only have Chuck to table clearance: 7-3/4''if the block I'm working on is an 1" high (pretty tall block) how long are the bits... end mills?
what would be the therotecical hight of a block I could work on...

GrothThanks for the links...
My local store KMSTools is probly where i'm going to get my parts but I'll keep LittleMachineShop.com in mind.

The whole head of the machine (motor, spindle, and all) goes up and down on the column. Too little clearance can be a problem, much too never is. Your block could be anything from paper thin to 6 or 7 inches (depending on your vice or clamping kit). By the way, the chuck isn't used when milling, it can't hold endmills tightly enough. You'll need to get a set of MT2 collets to hold your endmills.

Bang for the buck, I'd go with it's bigger brother (in fact I plan to get one once I solve my cash-flow problems). Bigger motor, bigger table, R8 spindle taper (better availability of collet and endmill-holders), doesn't have the drillpress-style extensible quill (makes the head more rigid, better accuracy).

But, yeah, the little one will work okay.

Oh, and LittleMachineShop isn't great for tooling, but they have replacement parts for every bit of both machines, plus some good hints and pointers.

Depends on what you want to do with it...excellent paper weight...lousy Chinese mill.

Drill press spindles are not made for side loads, and using a jacobs chuck is nearly suicidal for milling purposes, I've seen one basically self destruct....very dangerous.

Most cheap x-y tables, like the HF models are cheap chinese crap...don't bother if you want precision. The backlash on those can be measured with a car odometer.

If you plan on doing a few blocks and have other uses for it hobby-wise its not a bad investment. If you plan on only making waterblocks, just buy em...cheaper in the long run and I can't see making anything production-wise on that thing...at least nothing I would be proud of... Just my two cents and besides 300+ Canadien will buy you plenty of commercial waterblocks and a few hockey pucks to boot eh? ;) or save up ~$500 and buy a used sherline or similar, probably a few on e-bay right now from peeps that bought em and used em once or twice..

not very interested in buying krap
not very interested in danger. if i want danger I'll go play in the freeway...
my wife sais she like my pink body the way it is.

my interest is a few waterblocks. but at the moment i don't have that much other use for it... don't plan to go commercial...
it's always nice to have the tool... but do i realy need it???
mebe I'll wait a bit, buy some blocks... save my self some $$$... hockey puck anyone?

Thanks MC andy everyone else for the posts.

MC, I take it you don't like the Chinese? Whatever.

Madhacker, join the Yahoo group and query some of the people who are using that mill. You'll find that most are satisfied with what they got for their money. And some actually are using it for small-scale commercial work.

Whether you buy it or not, it's best to have solid information.