Mill or Lathe...

[Lowfategg]

Originally Posted by squirrel

If you need to make gearboxes, and you're not very good at laying out and drilling the holes with a drill press or punch, then a mill can be very helpful. Boring holes for press fit bearings can be done with a lathe, in fact you can more easily control the size of the hole.

But it is also far harder to setup and hold a gearbox plate in a lathe with a faceplate or a 4 jaw (unless your skilled, and you have the right tooling). If you don't have either of those, your screwed. With a boring bar and a mill you can make holes of any size (within .0005) on any piece you can get on the bed.

Originally Posted by squirrel

A better solution might be to figure out how to design the gearbox so it can use looser fits, like AM does.

More like poor machining that can causes gears to wear and fail quicker. Also it adds a ton more friction.

The best answer to this thread: Just get both.

Btw, this was quite a good thread also on a similar subject: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=85568