- Joined
- Apr 4, 2016
- Messages
- 870
Shawn,
You can certainly do good work with a round column mill. Many guys own them and are doing just that. You just have to be aware of the shortcomings and be willing to work with them. There are a few other options available. As you've said, there are some pretty good square column bench top mills that would likely work well for you. Also, there are a couple of very nice knee mills that have a smaller footprint than the typical BP style knee mill. One very nice machine is the Burke/Millrite and others were made by Hardinge, Rockwell and Clausing, so you may want to do some research on those. I fully understand the space limitation issue because I have a very small work shop myself, but with a lot of time spent moving things around and experimenting with various arrangements, I've managed to fit a lot of stuff into a pretty compact space. My shop is only 11 1/2 feet wide and I have a BP mill with the 9x48 table and there is a workbench directly across from it and I still have more than adequate room to safely operate the machine and walk around. There was a thread on this forum that a guy was building his shop inside of a bedroom, doing a very nice job, and if I recall correctly, he had a knee mill in there. You may want to search for that thread or maybe someone else here can direct you to it. At any rate, I hope you find a machine that will work well for you.
Ted
You can certainly do good work with a round column mill. Many guys own them and are doing just that. You just have to be aware of the shortcomings and be willing to work with them. There are a few other options available. As you've said, there are some pretty good square column bench top mills that would likely work well for you. Also, there are a couple of very nice knee mills that have a smaller footprint than the typical BP style knee mill. One very nice machine is the Burke/Millrite and others were made by Hardinge, Rockwell and Clausing, so you may want to do some research on those. I fully understand the space limitation issue because I have a very small work shop myself, but with a lot of time spent moving things around and experimenting with various arrangements, I've managed to fit a lot of stuff into a pretty compact space. My shop is only 11 1/2 feet wide and I have a BP mill with the 9x48 table and there is a workbench directly across from it and I still have more than adequate room to safely operate the machine and walk around. There was a thread on this forum that a guy was building his shop inside of a bedroom, doing a very nice job, and if I recall correctly, he had a knee mill in there. You may want to search for that thread or maybe someone else here can direct you to it. At any rate, I hope you find a machine that will work well for you.
Ted