Considering a round-column mill, advice requested.

To start, I would suggest:
  • Buy a decent drill chuck, a spotting drill and some decent drills. I suggest wire sized drills first (most smaller screws use wire size drills before tapping), then fractional, then letter sized drills. Eventually you will use them all.

I know these are probably pushing the description of decent, but Harbor Freight has a 115 piece black oxide drill bit set for $35, wire gauge 1-60, A-Z and fractional bits 1/64-1/2" by 1/64s. That is cheaper for all three types than any one of those sets from a name brand.

I recently picked up a set of 3, 120 degree cobalt spotting drills (1/8", 3/16", 1/4") from an ebay vender for $16 including shipping.
 
For your budget you could get a middle to small square column mill and have a couple dollars left over for a vise and some collets. Maybe even a few end mills. I know lots of folks get hunf up on one thing or another, but having owned two round column machines (one of which I still own) I have to say they are better than not having a mill, but the only benegot is being able to work on longer stock without shifting it on the table. Everything else seems to be "sub" inclduing the very feature I mentioned being also a detriment at times. The Grizzly G0704 is probably the best stater mill for many people. Fair work envelope. R8 toolings. Square column, and price. It would be better if it weighed more, but you can always fill the stand THAT COMES WITH IT full of concrete. Its not the same as if the machine weighed more, but it helps. , and the machine isn't any lighter than those round columns you are looking at. Don't care for Grizzly or their QC? Precision Mathews has a similar machine for a few dollars more.

If a round column in decent shape fell in my lap for half of retail I might buy it, but if I bought another benchtop size machine at retail it would be square column.

For anyone not familiar with the machine, this is what I'm considering:
HF #33686 1.5HP Milling/Drilling Machine

That is functionally an RF-31. I had an RF-30. I really didn't see any difference in the machines except the model number and slightly more modern materials.
 
Thank you all for the great advice, keep it coming!

There's some tooling I didn't mention, because I already had it and of course all of you should know this already, right? :p

For the lathe, I have dial indicators, drill bits (minus the ones I've broken), center drills, and a set of ER40 collets, machinist level, plus an odd assortment of gear cutters, and a few odd arbors here and there.

Between some R8 collets and the ER40, I think should cover me for most things.

I'll add fly cutters to the list. I think there's one or two that came in a box of "treasure" that came with the lathe, but I'm not sure what condition they're in.

I also have two mostly complete tap and die sets, standard and metric, which were gifted to me a couple years ago; as well as the usual assortment of hand and power tools one acquires.

Machinist jacks I have, they're some crapola I churned out a while ago, not pretty but they do work.

I admit the X2 line (Grizzly and others) have tempted me, but I'm afraid that a year down the road I'll want something bigger, ergo thinking one of the round column mill/drills is the way to go as I don't think I can reasonably get anything bigger than that within my constraints.
 
I just got a used Enco 30 Otherwise known as a RF-30, It was used and I have been cleaning it up and now started to set it up. It is what I could afford and came with a bunch of tooling. They are not biggest but should do for a while. It looks like it should handle a bit of work. One of the other things to do is keep looking at the Vids on youTube and such. People have mad all kinds of mods for them. I think some basic tooling such as endmils, Flycutter, vice etc will get you started, You already have stuff to measure with etc. Then purchase what you need or watch Ebay for deals on the stuff you would like to have. that is just my 2 cents worth. Good luck on your Mill.
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone. I decided to quit stalling and placed the order for the mill and some tooling. Here's to hoping for satisfactory results!
 
I have had 3 of them (all converted to CNC) and they are strong and accurate. The head swings left or right so you can extend your travel considerably. You can almost eliminate the need to raise or lower the head if you get a set of ER collets and regular collets. Long stuff goes in the regular collets and the shorter stuff in the extended ER collets.

I use a 6-inch vise without a swivel base on mine and I highly recommend it over a 4-inch. It is flush with the table in the back and hangs over a lot in the front. It cost me $140 and I'm glad I went with the bigger one. If you want to convert to CNC I have everything you would need.
 
I use a 6-inch vise without a swivel base on mine and I highly recommend it over a 4-inch. It is flush with the table in the back and hangs over a lot in the front. It cost me $140 and I'm glad I went with the bigger one. If you want to convert to CNC I have everything you would need.

I can't imagine a 6" on these, a 4" is no slouch size-wise.
I'm mildly interested in CNC and may eventually explore in that direction once the newness wears off and I tire of manual operation.

I'm just down to waiting until it arrives, expected delivery is mid-January; the tooling is building up in the garage ahead of it.
 
I bought the HF round column mill and only wish I had got there red mill with the table lift . Not much more then the round column with the 25% off coupon. It's in the range you want to spend and the size is almost the same . There are advantages to the table lift for drilling and reaming even boring . Another plus you can add an extra spacer to get more room . Ck the HF red mill I wish I had.
 
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