Mill from HF

Grizzly sells a version of the same style mill for about $2200 with a power feed on the table.

I would expect that one from HF to be built pretty cheaply to get it to that price. Worth having a personal look at one or two versions of this style mill before laying the money down. Take someone with some experience with you if you can. If I were buying one of those, I would expect to have to do some dissasembly and tuning before it was ready to run.

FWIW this style of mill is referred to as an A1S or A1-S mill. If you get one that's well put together, they are pretty decent home shop machines.

If you expect to do a lot of work with small cutters, Griz has a version they call the woodworker or wood mill, that has a higher top end speed range. Dunno if grizz still sells the Tiawan made machines or if they are selling mainland China made machines now, but they used to have a bit higher build quality machines, as well as having a rep for decent support.

Chances are good that a North American made mill of similar size will be a better buy and be in about the same condition (wear, accuracy) as well as holding it's value better. As a plus, you may get tooling with the used one. That is going to depend on a fair pile of variables, such as your ability to judge condition, and your willingness to assume a risk or two on your own judgement. Got any friends locally, with experience?

Cheers Trevor Jones

I think busybee has a slightly smaller machine thank the one you listed thats a nearer match. But even the smaller busybee machine seems to have Twice the vertical travel of the HF one

And yes the prices are in $CDN (85 US cents is one canadian dollar)

Who is the actual "OEM" is for this mill family Most of the 500 pound mill drills are made by Rong Fu and rebadged to whichever manufacturer(RF25 RF 31 and RF40)

I wonder who is actually making the A1S type machines

And what "Old ir> I have about a 7 year old Grizzly G1008 that looks like the HF mill in your

I helped a buddy set up one of the BusyBee units this spring. Seems to work pretty well and he has been working a lot of alum on it with the occasional chunk of steel. He also bought the Shooting Star DRO and is very happy with it.

I've seen the Busy Bee ones in person and their build quality was nowhere near as nice as the Tiawanese ones I had seen before.

That said, I cannot honestly tell anyone if the Tiawanese built machines are even still available, or whether the Grizzly machines are the same or not.

I have been told that the owners of Busy Bee are related to the owners of Grizzly Tools, but have no confirmation of that.

I'd still wish to see as many variants in person as I could, prior to making a decision.

One thing you might try is to contact the variuos outfits and see if they would pass your contact info to one of their customers in your area for a refferal. That might allow a chance to get some feedback, too.

Cheers Trevor Jones

Stay Away.... 8TPI screws.. thats .125 per turn on the handles, a REAL bitch to keep track of... if you do buy it you'll be buying a DRO too...

--.- Dave " Cheap tools are false economy "

I don't have any problem with my Gorton and it uses 8TPI screws. It took a little bit of getting used to, but not much. I wouldn't rule out any piece of equipment because of it.

BTW, I'm not commenting on the quality of the HF mill, about which I know nothing.

Peter

Be reminded that PRC design/manufacturing is not the same as Western design/manufacturing.

It may well be that several foundries are turning out what appear to be the same castings (and indeed may be based on patters from the same design bureau), but of different materials [e.g. rejected sash weights v slitter scrap] and in turn these castings are sold to totally separate companies that are manufacturing what appears to be the same machine tool, but using totally different methods, machines and having totally different internal controls and quality standards.

Western distributors, that for "a slight additional cost" get "hand selected," "pick of the litter" machines, (and other customers get the remainder) greatly complicates things.

A "green" machine selected for a picky, quality oriented distributor may be far more satisfactory than a run-of-the-mill "red" or "blue" machine painted/packed for the price/volume oriented distributor, even though the machines may have been constructed of consecutively produced parts, and assembled one after the other.

Unka George (George McDuffee) ............................. I sincerely believe . . . banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. Thomas Jefferson (1743?1826), U.S. president. Letter, 28 May 1816, to political philosopher and Senator John Taylor

Thinking in eights is easy :-) It's a bit of a bugger if you need to advance

17mm (say) but once my eldest gave me her old four function calculator I found that I didn't even need my slide rule any more :-)

Mark Rand RTFM

Bear in mind that the likes of Colchester/Clausing did exactly the same thing with their own products. You could by the "normal" model or the "toolroom" model. Both were identical apart from the toolroom model having been selected out of the tests of the production run as the best of the lot.

Mark Rand RTFM