I Got Burnt!!

The newer Haas toolroom mills have a full enclosure, some government safety nonsense I think. I rarely say anything in public regarding converting these RongFu 45 type mills to CNC but having done so myself, I think its a horrible idea. You can buy a used Haas toolroom mill or mini mill for not that much more money than you will sink into a RongFu 45 CNC project. Say another $10k. They have about the same foot print and the advantages are too numerous to list.
 
Casting voids are pretty common on all the chinese machinery you buy. All the voids are just filled in with bond (or cheaper chinese equivalent) and painted. Does hurt the function. Looks like one of those voids took a strike during shipping and chipped. No functional issue, just needs to be touched up.

No surprise that it is hard to shift gears; pretty common for a new machine to be stiff until it is broken in. Also, sometimes you have to turn the spindle by hand to help shift it into place.

That vibrating lever: if you take the top off the gear box, you will understand why it is vibrating. There is a spinning shaft underneath it, and the lever slides cooler which pushes a gear back and forth on it to change gears. This will probably get better as the machine breaks in.

Loose screws, loose electrical pass throughs. Par for the course. My grizzly equipment is no better.

I don't see any deal breakers in your video. Just some things that need some elbow grease.

Most people treat these machines as kits: they are not delivered to you in a completely useable form. Sucks? Yes. But you want perfection, then you are going to pay double the price to get a Taiwan machine. Look at what Enco charges for their Rong Fu mills vs their house brand. The difference? Country of origin. You get what you pay for.

I am betting if you send this machine back and buy a Grizzly G0755, that you still won't be impressed by what you buy.

CO has had a spotty history as the company has changed hands 3 or 4 times, with varying level of customer satisfaction along the way. The new management at CO doesn't seem to have achieved takeoff speed.

If you want a machine you will be happy with, than I strongly recommend you buy a Precision Matthews 935TS knee mill. Twice the cost of the 12Z, but I think you will like what you get. Far more capable than a square column mill.

Full disclosure: I have no PM machines (I have a lot of Grizzly), but there are a lot of happy PM folks on this forum.
 
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I got the International Hobbies manual version of this machine, unfortunately only a year before Gene died, and the company went out of business. To their credit, the machine was cleaned up, everything worked, the ways were smooth and turned easily, except near the left end. That required a little adjustment of the gibs. The gear box design is kind of crappy and noisy. After a year of use a roll pin in the gearbox(3 position handle) came out which required some disassembly to replace.

Sounds like Charter Oak is having more quality control problems than previous. China is having some problems and I imagine the the suppliers there are having problems themselves.
 
I have been trying to tell you guys for a long time that the RF-45 and clones are complete garbage..... Do not buy one....
 
Sorry guys edit my comments,but hate seeing anyone spending that kind of money for something that they can't even get the cosmetics right.And hate to see that a member has to rebuild a brand new mill.But you do have two,I would pick the best one that sounds like its running correctly and parts off the other to make one good mill.Plus you will have all kinds of parts for yrs to come.I believe that they made a good attempt by sending you another without asking for pics or proof.There's members here who did have a good experience,so far all we know of is one not so good experience but you have two machines:) Yes its not right but once your done you will know your mill inside and out,I bet if you check parts prices you will be sticker shock.
Like others said those machines should have never come out of the shop for shipping but they did,I don't believe that Charter did it on purpose cause they know that now days bad reviews travel fast.Good luck sir,make the most out of two machines.
 
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Complaints aplenty,but do you know the era of cheap cast iron from China is nearly at an end.The factories pouring out smoke and fumes while turning out cheap castings will soon be over.My prediction is these machines will take a price increase of 2x at least,as all the environmental controlls take hold,and factory owners resisting will be jailed (if they are lucky)....
 
This thread was started 3 or 4 years ago. I didn’t see any resolution posted, but it’s quite possible one complaint from 3 years ago should be viewed from that standpoint. A lot can change in 3 years. I don’t own anything from the vendor btw. Just pointing out this is a necropost, that somehow got revived, and doesn’t necessarily represent the company qc TODAY.
 
I know this is an older post but for new shoppers, I wanted to give my perspective as I've owned and run my 12Z mill, converted to CNC for many years now, (since 2009). Wow, time flies. I bought it when the company was Industrial Hobbies. It is essentially the same machine as in the OP's video, except CNC'd. I think that separating the facts about the basic mill from the anecdotal quality example(s) is important.

This is by no means a $30K highly-polished, super-massive machine, if you could even find that for $30K. But it has been a workhorse for me for about 10 years. I have used it 70% business, 30% hobby. It does have some minor casting voids in unimportant areas and the y-axis was stiff at first. Some stoning of a high spot on the very end of one of the ways and the gibs (maybe 20 minutes or so) fixed that up. As with all these machines I spent a day doing preservative clean-up, alignment, tightening here and there, etc. I also did my own CNC conversion using IH's kit. The CNC kit was outstanding in quality, produced by IH in CT. The conversion was no big deal although a bit nerve-wracking because you have to carefully drill and tap some holes in the castings to mount things. I use the mill for wood, plastic, aluminum, and steel. The drive-train is relatively noisy and you can find people that have modified their machine for a belt drive. I just live with the noise. It's fine. I did not see the gear lever vibration shown in the video, that seems abnormal. For years I've been thinking I will tram the Z column better as I imagine a couple of mil shim would make it perfect but I've never gotten around to it. It has done good work as-is. The only time I notice it is if I do a large diameter cut with a fly cutter. Maybe this is the year I finally get around to precisely tramming it. Yeah, probably not.

My biggest complaint about the machine? A very slow, probably a couple of ounces over 10 years leak of oil around the spindle bearing. The drip seems to have slowed down over the years. I just put a piece of cardboard on the table in case a drip or two happens if it sits idle for a while. Due to Murphy, it always seems to want to have a drip when I have an HDPE part in the mill, staining the part. So, take it apart, replace seals/bearings, etc? Naw, the cardboard works.

Do I wish I had a stouter mill, a knee mill? Sometimes. However, this mill has accomplished everything I have asked it to do. The extended work envelope has been invaluable to me. It is slower going in steel than on a larger mass machine but it has done well. For softer materials, I rigged up a mount for a porter-cable router to get higher RPMs. It just bolts on the side of the head opposite the quill feed handle. The router extension works quite well for plastic and wood especially and ok for aluminum even.

From my perspective, I got a huge bang for the buck with this style of mill. I still just run Mach 3 and drive the axis with the parallel ports of an old PC. I may improve that at some point after I retire. I think this 12Z mill will do most of what I need for the next couple of decades. So, $8K / ~30 years is about $260/year for a decent, large envelope CNC mill. That's not bad, especially since my first job paid for a good chunk of it. Some spend much more than that on lattes. I have spent probably as much on end mills, collets, slitting saws, tool holders, indexer, vises, chucks, etc. since then. So there's that... This is not necessarily a cheap hobby.

* Gene, one of the owners of the former IH company, was still around when I bought my mill. If anyone ever spoke with Gene then they know that he was a great, easy-going guy that liked helping out his customers. He helped me figure out a couple of things during the CNC conversion, probably on the phone for an hour. I barely knew him and even I miss the guy.
 
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