Harbor Freight Geared head Drill/Mill

Shit I wouldn't touch that piece of shit with a ten foot toucher. The picture they took that you saw, shows the paint flaking off the motor casing. If you buy this piece of worthless crap it will take merely a ton of work to get the whole thing tuned up to a starting working point. And I do suggest going with

they have an excellent reputation and are in China and Taiwan doing the quality control from their own offices. Make a comparison. HF is good for bar clamps.

Alex

Looks similar to my Grizzly 1126. The Grizzly has bigger table and more X,Y movement, but the head part looks the same. Be sure the motor is reversable. The description gives a tapping max of 1/4 in., so probably is reversable.

The Grizzly came with a 3" face mill, a 5/8 drill chuck. Looks like Harbor wants you to buy accessories from them.

Oh, I about forgot, you will have to wear hearing protection if you run the machine very long at high speed. That's the down side of a gear head!

Paul

Pieace of junk, buy the grizzly or enco... xman

I have looked at this machine at a Harbor Freight store and I was actually quite impressed by the fit and finish. I own a HF 33686 belt drive mill which I prefer to the gear head types such as the 42827. But, if I were considering a gearhead I would certainly consider it. If you want to read a variety of opinions on these and other mill/drills you might try the mill_drill group on yahoo groups. The dovetail square column type mill seems to be the current preferred model.

You know, this was on sale for $100 off at my local HF so I went to the store to check it out. When I first looked at it, the column looked out of square. And I mean plainly apparent to the naked eye. I went to another part of the store and grabbed a carpenter's square and sure enough... it was WAY out.

I know this is correctable, and perhaps caused by improper assembly by a store employee... but, DAMN.

Of course, at HF it's possible that the square was way out...

I have a friend that has one of these and I was shocked at how loud it was. It's louder than my 1HP Gorton with its 1/2HP knee motor and my rotary phase convereter all going at once.

Peter

I visited a nearby HF store & glanced at the mill-drill, they had only one, a round column belt drive model. The casting was cracked where the column rack passes up thru the head- you could literally see into the crack and the iron looked like a very fine sponge. And the paint was dreadful. And it made me very glad to be spending money on a Bridgeport instead.

I went into the place with $150 or so to spend and left with $145 and some plastic parts bins- about the only thing worth buying in there. Yikes.

Gregm

I have a similar but subtly different model from HF that was apparently built at a different factory than this current model. Almost identical, although mine was $1,299. The current model came in $2-300 cheaper when they appeared in the catalog. I've been very happy with mine for the money. Yes, it's very loud, and without the dovetail column it has all the problems of any drill mill (you can't reposition the head vertically without having to find your xy point again). It has plenty of power, though, and the x and y axes were all within a thou from one end of travel to the other. The column was square to the base, and the quill is parallel to the column. OTOH, the quill drive has way too much play, and is calibrated in 125 thousandths per turn, so that you have to do some math to drop or raise the quill accurately more than one turn. The quill stop for when you're just using it as a drill press was worthless. I had to modify the head casting itself it to get it to work properly (but hey, it's a Harbor Freight tool, whaddya expect!). I also had to modify the pull-up bolt that holds tools in the quill to get it to work with the drill chuck. The head leaks a bit of oil. The reversing switch is left for forward and right for reverse. Backwards, but it's Chinese.

Would I rather have a used Bridgeport? Of course. Did I have room for a Bridgeport? Not a prayer. Would I rather have a Deckel FP2. Absolutely. Could I afford a used FP2? Not likely.

Generally I'm happy with what I got. I've used it quite a bit and it's always done what I expected of it. Of course mine's not exactly the same as the one you're considering. You should have a look at one before committing your $$'s.

-- Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)

I don't have to like Bush and Cheney (Or Kerry, for that matter) to love America

I suggest a Rusnok 850 made by Electro Mechano.

for a drooling look.

Alex

You might want to check this one from Lathermaster. I believe Robert Bertrand comes highly recommended on this group.

Wayne

My experience with grizzly's customer "service" the past 4 months leads me to believe they took their lessons watching bulls "service" cows. I will shop at Sears before I shop at grizzly again, and I haven't shopped at Sears since November 1982.

-jc-