Mill or Lathe...

[Lowfategg]

Originally Posted by Cory

I would highly recommend against the 3 in 1 machines. You get one machine that does 3 things poorly, instead of 1 machine that does 1 thing pretty well.

I'd recommend a lathe. I think we use ours more than our manual mill and our experience in the past has been that it's very easy to find machine shops to donate time to manufacture milled parts.

I completely agree that its not ideal and that separate machines would do a much better job.

But if the question is only having one or the other (budget reasons), I much rather have the capability of doing simple mill operations along with simple turning operations, since its a whole lot better than not begin able to do anything.

Some teams aren't so lucky to find such machine shops because of location or other reasons.

Anyway, if I could only have one, I would get a good sized lathe first and then a mill after that (don't dis the usefulness of a milling machine, its a whole load better than a drill press). If you take the time to look around on craigslist or ebay you can sometimes find older machinery that will be well suited for robotics at pretty cheap prices. I got an older J-head Bridgeport for $500 along with a vise, beats any import machine that you could ever get for the money.