Medium Sized Milling Machine?

Garth - I wish you lived closer.

I have a Sherline 5400 Mill sitting in my garage that I picked up used and never managed to use. I'm looking to get rid of it. It's fully qualified and ready to be converted to CNC.

Any ideas on the best way to sell this thing?

T

Seig X series mills would be the most appropriate, I think. As well, there is a solid knowledge base for doing exactly that.

The Taig/Peatol mill might suffice, but I suspect to be too small for what you are looking for.

Search online for "seig X3" or "seig super X3".

Used. Look around for one of the RF25 or RF30 mill drills with the round column. Much maligned for the lack of indexing of the head to the column, they are still a very useful tool, and have been available for quite a while, at reasonable prices.

Cheers Trevor Jones

I've got a baby X1 from Axminster (couldnt afford bigger) and I use it for making replacement parts for vintage RC cars.

Ok, its not exactly the greatest mill on earth but its great for what I use it for. But then for £240 I cant complain at all. And from what I can see on the web it has great modification potential. There are quite a few CNC conversion projects out there, which, one day, I plan to do.

Perhaps one day I'll be able to afford a bigger one and join the big boys!!! (Most likely when I ruin the X1 by trying the CNC conversion!!!!)

AC

Garth,

I could well be interested.

If you have a chance, please would you contact me via my website.

Many thanks

Duncan

Duncan,

Interested in what??

Regards,

Garth.

Little bit small, but thanks for the information.

Regards,

Garth.

I'm possibly interested in TRP's Sherline 5400 mill.

Or something of that ilk / capability.

Duncan

I wouldn't describe the Sherline as a "medium sized mill" which was the original requirement - this is a small desktop machine.

Actually better off with the Taig in this size of machine IMHO - slightly more capacity and altogether a more robust machine. Very easy to CNC convert too.

Regards, Tony

Trevor,

Thanks for the suggestion.

The Sieg X3 looks exactly the size I was after. I looked at a few user sites, and from the detail photographs it does look a bit like something of Machine Mart quality. Not that this necessaritly makes it totally unacceptable, but, are there any British makes of that size or at least something more comparable to my ML7 in build quality? Obviously this would be second hand. I have just bought an old British Bench Drill to replace my crappy NuTool item, and I promised myself not to buy nasty stuff in future.

Regards,

Garth.

I got a Dore-Westbury a couple of years ago. This does complement the ML7 very well, because it has the same nose thread and shares quite a lot of tooling, but my overall impression is that it isn't as sturdy as the Myford. I paid 240 for it which I think was unusually cheap, and personally I don't think I'd want to pay the 500-ish that they normally seem to go for. I'll keep it until I'm limited by the mill's capabilities rather than mine, then I'll upgrade it.

If I could think of a good excuse I'd quite fancy the Steinel that's currently on homeworkshop.org. I don't know a lot about them but it just looks a lot more like a real machine than the chinese mills. I'd look at the Centec 2A as well.

I'm quite willing to be corrected by more knowledgable people here, though. I'm easily tempted by nice solid lumps of iron and easily put off by plastic handwheels, whatever the other attributes !

-adrian

Is a Tom Senior M1 too big?

Dave

There may well be, but likely, not one that is as well suited to a CNC conversion. The X3 is doubly qualified, as you can order it as a ready to convert model as well as a straight manual machine, IIRC. They only qualify as nasty, if you start comparing them to industrial equipment that is very much older, and cost very many times what these cost now, when they were new.

Take a look at the mills on the lathes.co.uk site and you will see a representation of milling machines of sizes suitable for a Model Engineer.

Most of them are not really good candidates for a CNC conversion.

Cheers Trevor Jones

I would agree. The significant thing about the X3 is that it has a divetail Z axis. Round column mills are a nightmare for CNC conversion

- generally the only workable solution is to drive the quill, which is not as straightforward.

Regards, Tony

Dave,

I think it is just a bit too big.

Regards,

Garth.

An an ashamed plug here. Have a look at

This is a mod to a Chester champion I did some years ago. Still use it every now and then, one of the servo's has seized at present due to coolant getting in it.

Adrian

Adrian,

Thats a very informative website.

Thanks,

Garth.

Great Site Adrian: Bookmarked.