Beginner - Equipment Recommendation? (mill / lathe)

I used a combo Grizzly unit (looks like the G0516 looking at their website) for a couple years at a job. Not my "primary duty" or whatever, but I spent probably better than half my time turning parts and attempting to use the mill, all in a gunsmithing capacity. In short; don't waste your money.

I'm not familiar with the used machinery market in Texas, but I'd hold out for decent used machines, which may take months or more to find the right deal. I watched casually for about 8 years before I found my lathe at the right price/quality juncture, but I'm probably unreasonably picky.

The combo Grizzly was especially horribly in a few regards:

- It had "DROs" only. These were the form of digital read outs on the dials, which replaced any analog readout completely. I hated this, and found them to be relatively inaccurate. I eventually developed a feel for the "real offsets" and printed a chart to post on the wall to the effect of "reading 0.001 is true movement of 0.0025" Across larger distances they weren't terribly out, so I'd use them to rough in a part and leave 5-10 thou, then measure between every cut and creep up on it. Took forever to make anything, but got me there. This dial discrepancy was discovered when I trusted it and put holes in the wrong spot on a relatively rare FN shotgun receiver - just far enough out to make drilling them correctly impossible without repair beyond our tooling abilities. I still lay things out by hand now, even when using top of the line machines with .0001" DROs at work.
- There was a rheostat to adjust speed, which complemented change gears, and I presume the gear chart was lost before I got there. Basically, you never knew what RPM you were actually running. When I arrived, it was geared to run the fastest possible speed (i.e. too fast for anything we'd ever actually do), and the tooling was installed in the lathe upside down. I wish I were joking.
- The mill had very little Z travel, enough so that it was difficult to get a 3-4" tall item on fixtures then under tooling, and I never even attempted to run a drill chuck, probably because the place was too cheap for one.

Expect to spend at least as much as you spend on the machine, on tooling. I suggest looking at and prioritizing the work you expect to do, and prioritize machine and tooling accordingly. A lot of folks advocate buying a lathe first, but if you really need a mill and can only use a lathe occasionally, my logic says a mill is the smarter first buy. I'd try to buy one and get it reasonably tooled up before you buy the second machine. That way you can do some work while you save for the other machine, instead of having two machines with no tooling to do any work :D
 
I agree with the above recommendations on finding decent used machines, your dollars will go much further, than new. That being said you will still be tight for both a mill and a lathe. The main reason is tooling you will need to use the machines can cost as much a the machine itself. Again this is the advantage of buying used machines, they often come equipped with tooling. Also when considering the size of the machines, it is not just the size of the part that must be considered but clearances for the work holding and tooling as well. For the work you described, a full size Bridgeport and min. 10" lathe.
 
This IS the feedback I was looking for. I still have lots of reading and learning, but you guys have steered me in the right direction and gave me an idea of what to start looking at.
 
shopmasterusa.com

This is what I have. Perfect it's not. It took a while to get everything dialed in, but, it's working pretty good now. Has been reliable for the year that I have owned it. The mill lacks rigidity for the horsepower it has so smaller tools are better.
 
Check local newspaper classifieds as well. Around here, those get far more use than Craigslist, and 99% of the CL stuff ends up on the newspaper site as well. I recently picked up a Bridgeport for $1500 that is in great shape, though I did need to clean all the grease out. :) I added a $300 DRO, which has been great. Just made the last couple brackets for my lathe DRO with it.

It seems like overkill when you move a Bridgeport in. I was looking at bench mills before. But after using it, I wouldn't go smaller. The rigidity alone is worth it even if I never fully use the work envelope. And the extra space means I can get away with having tools stick out a little, within reason. For example, my collet adapter eats about 3" of Z, but it doesn't matter for me. And I can always switch to R8s if I need the space.

My lathe is a Precision Mathews 1127. If you are willing to go new, they are a great vendor to work with. I had never owned machine tools before and wanted to make sure I had something that worked and had some support if I ran into problems. I also wanted to have something to make/repair parts for another machine should I need to. Thankfully Bridgeport mills are so common that parts are easy to come by. I did make a few when the replacements were overpriced and accuracy wasn't super important.
 
reharbert, welcome to the forum, this is a great place to ask for advice and learn for almost anything. For your first machine i would suggest buy a lathe, 12-14 inch swing some old iron, then look for a Mill, i presume you already have welder and hand tools.
 
xpect to spend at least as much as you spend on the machine, on tooling.

This man speaks the truth!

$1300 G0704 (New)
~ $1400 in tooling not counting the CNC conversion (some was metrology stuff)

$1100 Enco 12x36 lathe (Used)
~$800 so far.

Mind you this is over 5 years on the mill and 8 months on the lathe
 
With Craigslist you can do much more than just check daily to see if something comes up. Search for what you want. If it is still posted it likely is still available. I have found things that way and the seller is surprised someone contacted weeks later but it was still there.

Also you can look into near by areas on Craigslist. Search there.

When you do buy something you will need a truck or trailer to pick it up and another half hour or hour on the road is no big thing and can open up much more territory to search.
 
If you want to be able to surface heads of engines it will be virtually required to have a bridgeport style machine with a movable knee.

Benchtop mills would be less likely to have the working envelope to mount a cylinder head and even if it did the rigidity will not allow a large fly cutter to cut smooth over the surface.
 
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