what should I pay for this Enco mill?

Myself? Being a newbie at this, if in your position - with having free access to larger machines at work, and being really limited on space at home - I'd be spending a lot more time at work, after hours. But, that's just me.

I spend enough time there. I'm also off in the summer and have no desire to drive 60 miles round trip. I'd have to take my kids with me, too. I'd like something I can use at home so I can create projects for my students and also use it for myself.

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I think your 50% rule has you bottom feeding in the extreme. Recommend you ditch that rule and find a clean, used machine at a fair price.

Like I said, it's not really a rule so much as a guide. I've seen decent machines sell in the $600-800 range. I've also decided that a bigger machine is not for me, so I may take another look at smaller (and cheaper) machines. I got time, I can keep looking. I keep learning more and more, so when one does come up, I'll know its a fair deal and I can jump on it.

Thanks for all the input, I really appreciate it! It makes me think.
 
mickri said:
Unless he is willing to sell it for next to nothing as a project and you are ok with fixing it before you can use it I would pass. I am thinking between $100 to $150 at most.
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I was going to offer him more than that, but I just looked up prices for the parts that are likely to need replacing and I'm up to $450 delivered. I used the Grizzly G1006 mill parts list. It's not exact, but might work for most of the parts. I don't mind a project, but parts need to be available, and I need to get the mill for the right price.
 
Well I must also be some what unrealistic. I have been looking for a benchtop mill for a while. Most of them in this neck of the woods are in pretty poor shape. This past week I put a bid in on a central machine mill. It had been sitting unused for about 20 years, it came with very little tooling, a wooden stand that was not of great use. I knew the gent selling it, he had used it less than a few hours total, year of mfg was 1985.
I checked what I could get a brand new equal shipped for, half price +10% was my bid. I lost it for $10. I need/want a machine to finish some projects, not another project.

It may have been a deal, but I figured setting that long a complete tear down was due. Bearing grease may or may not have been fine.

So myself, I have decided to just go NEW and be done with it. Because as we all know so well, about the time I hit the go button on this purchase benchtop mills will fall from the sky for pennys on the dollar with large amounts of tooling thrown in.
Because this is exactly what happened on my lathe. I looked for several years before finding a used lathe I was happy with. The next three months I was turned on to close to a dozen 8x36" class lathes.
 
ARC-170 has two threads running on mill/drills His last comments were that he was going to look at smaller mill/drills because he thought that an RF31 was larger than what he wanted after looking at one. This might be too small. Or it might not be. That's a decision that he will have to make. We are all just throwing out suggestions.
 
M--please don't take my criticism of the "toy" machine personally. We are all trying to help the OP find a decent machine and avoid the inadequate.
 
I didn't take your comment as personal. I agree that a mini mill/drill is pretty light weight. I wouldn't buy one. But the OP is looking at smaller mill/drills for home use. How small I don't know. He has larger full size mills at work that he can use. I was just making a suggestion was all.
 
I realized 2 threads was a bad idea too late! My original idea was to have one for each machine, but I quickly realized that would be too much, so I just kept the original two.
I bought the LMS machine after deciding that the RF-25/30 clones were just too big. So far, I haven't needed to make anything very big or make really big cuts (0.025" into mild steel or aluminum is the max so far). I have bigger machines available at work for anything bigger.

I'll post about it separately so we can just talk about that particular machine now, instead of looking all over SoCal! Thanks for all your help and support everyone, I really appreciate it.:beer:
 
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