[rswsmay]

If you go into purchasing any tools or equipment from HF, you will be hit-or-miss with the quality. You can't beat using your senses with their products (looking, touching, listening) to determine suitability, quality, materials used, etc. You can pick up some deals or dogs there... it just depends.

I purchased one of the HF mini-mills last year knowing in advance that I would have to do a few upgrades to increase its reliability and usability. Even with these upgrades which totaled up to about $130, I still felt I had a good deal on a solid machine which would be able to mill the parts I needed. BTW.... I got it for $100 off so I figured I came out ahead.

The previously mentioned issue about the plastic gears on the HF mini-lathe is a long known nefarious issue with their mini-mills and mini-lathes. As an option, Micro-mark puts out a version of the same basic mini-mill with metal gears. My preference however is for the belt drive conversion I installed because it eliminates the gear noise, widens the speed range and no more stripped gears. I believe it also improved my ability to mill more material on each pass without the machine bogging down, overloading the motor, or again.. stripping gears.

The best I can tell you is to research the product as much as you can prior to making your purchase. Even if you going to the store to look at the product, most people would not know that plastic gears are used on the mini-mill/lathes and that this is an item needing almost constant repair. For their larger mills, lathes, mills/drills, etc., just do a network search on the product to see what experience people have had with reliability, repairs, quality, accuracy, etc.