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Originally Posted by Rick TYler
I am way more of a woodworker than a machinist, and you are clearly The Man. We might be getting a grant for $2,500 or so to spend on tools. We already have everything you'd expect in a good high school woodshop (including two drill presses). What metal-working tool would you buy for $2,500? I am not thinking of handtools, by the way. We're OK on calipers, grippers, pounders, &c. Thanks!
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Oh no, please don't confuse me with The Man!
I am only a hobby machinist trying to learn how to work with metal in my garage! I do hang out at the machine shop at work a little too much though.
Hmm, $2500. Well, of course it depends on what type and size work you want/need to do. Just off the top of my head here are a some ideas how I might spend that $2500. No particular order:
Option 1) You could get one of the small 7x12 Chinese lathes ($400 - Cummins), a mini-mill ($400 - Homier - R8 Spindle), and a small metal cutting bandsaw (<$200 - HF, Homier, others), and still have a good bit left over after shipping for tooling (lathe chuck(s), mill collets, end mills, lathe bits, mill vise, parallels, etc.). This would give you a fairly good "mini" machine shop. It would take a bit of time tweeking, tuning, and adjusting the machines but you it might me nice to have a "portable" shop to take to your competition pits. You would learn a lot about metal working and the machines while you take the machines apart, adjust, and tweek, and make mods to them to get them to perform better.
Option 2) If I could only buy one machine and needed something larger than a "mini" machine I would buy a mill before a lathe. A mill is more versatile. Of course, you still need some way to cut your material down to a workable size (bandsaw/hacksaw). "Rong Fu" has a good reputation for decent quality import (Taiwan IIRC) mill drills and you could get a basic true "Rong Fu" for ~$1100. Figure $1500 with power down feed. Another $200 for a stand. So for ~$1700 not including shipping you could get a pretty decent ready to run larger R8 mill without any tooling. Stay away from the look alike/knock off "Rong Fu" mills. If you can find a square column "Rong Fu" you would be better off than a round column but I think they are a good bit more expensive. You will still need at a minimum: a mill vise, some parallels, some R8 collets, and of course some end mills. The down side is this mill is going to be about 700 lbs so portability to a competition is out of the question. A good place to start if you like this option is ENCO (
www.use-enco.com).
Option 3) Buy a used mill locally. Don't laugh! A used Bridgeport in good working order and good condition (not worn out) can't be beat. Check with local machine shops in your area and see if they have anything they are looking to get rid of. Times are tough these days for many machine shops with a lot of production work going overseas. Also, many shops are converting over from old manual machines to new CNC machines. There are deals out there if you look. Watch out for power concerns. Machines may require 3 phase power and that may be a problem for you. If you know any machinist get them to take a look at any potential used machines for you before you buy. Look at Ebay to get an idea of what used machines are going for that you may be interested in but be careful of actually buying a machine on Ebay that you can't check out in person. Shipping costs can also be a problem. If you are lucky you might find a machine locally that has some tooling with it in a ready to run package deal. If it is for a school don't be afraid to ask if the shop could make a donation to the school. You never know!
I am curious what other CD folks would do with the $2500!
I hope this helps!
-Chuck