Suggestions on Tabletop Mill

Clausing 85xx. Hard to find.

I have a small hardinge vertical mill pictured in the middle of the page:

Best Regards Tom.

The Centec 2A or 2B with the vertical head are excellent machines, if you can find one.

Nuff bashing of Chinese imports. Folks had a case about 5 years ago, now these are 100% legit metalworking equipment.

Take a very hard look @ Sieg X3:

- mini mill

- 7x14 lathe

- 4x6 bandsaw

- TIG

- MIG

- Air compressor (404xx)

- buffer-grinder

- dozens and dozens of hand tools

Never had a problem, most purchased over last 3 years or so. If not for import, I'd never be able to have as much fun with metalworking and knifemaking

Check out this site

They offer the Zay7045 (800 lbs.) benchtop mill.

I am almost finished assembling my X3 [Grizzly G0463]. The cast iron castings are pretty good, but some of the table and head lock screws (with the handle) seem to be cut on a lathe from CRS. The leadscrews look good [acme] and they are standard threads, not metric.

I am waiting for the table power feed to be available. If you have all the room in the world, then it's a slam dunk moving it [350 pounds, under 40" tall]. In a space constrained area, the motor mounting saves vertical height.

My mill came fairly clean inside. Supposedly, the Grizzly model has a longer table than the HF model.

I saw something odd, the plate that the head is screwed to has a collar installed in it. It seems to have no purpose, perhaps for mounting the head assembly. Or... maybe the X3 and the Super X# [with the tilting head] share the same mounting plate and the X3 might be retrofitted to swivel as well...

rashid111 wrote:

Harbor Freight sells the X3 now, also. I saw it in their online catlog but not in a printed one, FYI.