The same machines exist in industry. Except they are properly called Knee Mills and Bed Mills.
I use both, I actually prefer the bed mills, but then mines CNC and the head is a very heavy but counterbalanced affair driven by ballscrews.
The Seig X3 falls into the bedmill catagory I suppose. I quite like that machine and may even buy one when finally retire my manual Bridgeport. I'm planning on replacing it with a small manual mill, and the CNC's will do the heavier work.
Wayne...
The drawbar on my Warco is 12" long. Needs a celing height of 78" to be able to pull it strainght upwards and clear rhe head.
Don't forget you need a fair bit of clearance either side to allow for the table travel.
If you are lucky or well organised in that all your tooling is the same drawbar thread you shouldn't need to remove the drawbar.
If at any time you do need to then something like the VMC can tilt the head making it possible to get it out sideways.
Last place I was in had a low ceiling and I had no problems with clearance once I had modified my boring head to suit a standard thread.
-- Regards,
John Stevenson Nottingham, England.
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Thank you all for your comments, much appreciated.
Ian.
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