Is Thee Shop Fox M1001 A Good Starter Mill?

Fairways_and_Greens

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For a newbie, is the Shop Fox M1001 a good starter machine that will be capable machining staineless?
 
Probably a good starter, but if your gonna spend that kind of cash why not get a used bridge or clone? I got mine made in 1991 for 950 bucks.... and a like new Kurt 688 for 290. And yes and no to the stainless, it will cut it, but tye depths required to get under work hardening will be pushing that machine to it highest limits, you can, if your very careful machine stainless with it, but if you wanna use it to machine thick blocks into putters I think you could run into problems, but you also may be able to accomplish your goal with careful and thought out machining process using mist coolant at the least.
 
I got it from McKean machinery outta ohio, bought it a few months ago had it shipped up here
They weren't asking 950, I low balled the heck out of em, and the came back with that, lol I offered about half what they wanted
 
Be careful of that turret mill. I bought one nearly new,only to discover that the lead screw jumped the threads in the bronze nut. The threads in the nut were only threaded about .015" deep!! And,both x and y nuts were similar. I bought it as an extra mill for a special use that did not materialize. I bought some precision threaded rod to make leadscrews from,and planned to make new nuts. Parts from identical LOOKING turret mills were completely different. Mine was an Enco badged one. They stopped selling it,and no parts available. Not that the new nuts would have been threaded any more deeply.

I ended up selling it for what I had in it as I really didn't need it,and it was too much trouble to mess with.

Oh,yes: I bought new IMPERIAL threaded rod because the mill used metric leadscrews,and there were some annoying extra thousandths on the dials,making it a PITA to conveniently step off distances like you can with .200" per revolution dials.
 
Only a deal if the leadscrews don't jump the nuts.
 
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