One tool/machine to level up a moderate shop

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

That's not a big budget, frankly: This puts you in the very small hobbyist market or the used smaller machine market, at best. You can never tell, though: I've seen full-size (many-thousand-dollar) milling machines given for free because it is for robotics.

Yeah, I'm aware, but it is the budget we are working with. In fact our "shop" is really just an unused building with tables that our team built to support various donated used tools on top of them. As our program makes a bigger impact however, we attract sponsors and can start to make permanent improvements. Slow and steady improvements to quality facilities will be part of our path to success



So, a bit of a follow up question then. A couple of people have said that with additional tooling you can do many "mill tasks" with a lathe. Is it feasible to purchase a lathe now, and then over time step up the lathe to do a couple milling tasks? It wouldn't give us the machining power of a full mill, but we could make do with a little pain and extra effort? And it would satisfy the "one machine" part of the question.

I ask because, like I said above, I envision a gradual increase in our tool quality and abilities, not a big jump one year. Getting a cheaper tool that can do some of the things that a more expensive tool can do, may tide us over until we are able to step things up further.