Man, sorry to hear that RED_5.

What is the return policy on the Grizzly? Is that what you're planning on doing?

EDIT: Hey, page 3!  

I'm so far down this road, I'm going to see it to completion
I've invested too much to throw it all away

I may not be 100% satisfied, and believe me, I will remember this experience going down the road and I will continue to share my experience with others.



update on the mill:

1. spindle is running pretty true.. good enough for me.... 0.0005"

2. the 3-jaw chuck / R8 collet assemby was a PITA.   Best I could do after messing around with it for an hour, was 0.002"

3. the table is pretty flat, if the indicator moved at all, as I moved the table along the x-axis, was about 0.0005"

4. I need to tram the head, but I have to figure out the best method with what I have here... ironically, one of the first projects I
ran across while surfing youtube, was the tramming tool...

5. I've got the handle off the y-axis, trying to figure out why the scale hangs up on the saddle.



all my years in aerospace have me a stickler for doing it right, so it really bothers me to encounter all these problems right out of the box crate.

finally figured a way to tram my head.... had to use my boring bar holder to hold the dial indicator posts (some odd-ball diameter that I didn't have a collet size to use.)

head was way out.  ~0.010"
found the bolts holding the head were not tight.. they are now, got maybe .0005" in X/Y.

got the base of my swivel vise secured to the middle of my table, used an edge finder on the top of the vise and the DRO to do it.

I'm waiting on another test indicator arm before I can accurately align the jaw of the vise; its accurate enough to make chips. so I
think I will do that tomorrow.  

if I remember, I'll take some video

I was a bit paranoid about speeds&feeds, so I wanted to get as much info as possible so I wouldn't mess up my cutters or do other damage.

I also wanted to track down the proper data for my carbide inserts for my 2" face mills as the more comprehensive speed/feed calculators
want you to insert all kinds of info.

I was able to track down the insert mfg (Korloy and Mitsubishi) and got adequate information, enough to plug into the calculators

the face mill I have, has 4 flutes and based upon the numbers I calculated... my machine wouldn't go fast enough for their optimal numbers (2500 rpm)
and I don't think my power feed could meet the rate either...

so, I went with as close as I could get.  which was 2000 rpm and power feed dialed up to max.

I first cut about 0.002 off the top of a 2x2 6061-T6 block I had.. I know thats not too much, but for the first pass, I wanted to play it safe.

2nd pass was 0.006.

I flipped the block over and decided to go for 0.008.

every pass was easy, no effort expended by the machine, as far as I could tell.  the 0.008 pass did sound different, but it was a considerable amount of more material.
The inserts didn't have a mark on 'em at all.  There were for AL, no coating, code H01.

I did take some video, which I will see what I can tomorrow to get it edited and share.  

I also received a 5C spin index and a 6" rotary table today, so I spent some time cleaning them up.  still have more to clean on the RT, as they cover that thing pretty
good.



side observations....

Face Mill:
I found some 50mm indexable face mills on ebay that were really reasonably priced.  some came with inserts installed.  They're close enough to 2" and use a 22mm
arbor.  A 22mm R8 arbor is easy to find.  Since they were reasonably affordable and changing inserts can be a chore,  I bought 2 facemill heads; one for AL the other for Steel.
changing between the two is only one bolt in the arbor.

Vise:
I  couldn't get a proper seat of the material against the parallels. I could only get one to not move.  I noticed that when closing the jaw, it pushed
the material up.  I did try and keep things down with a deadblow hammer.. this was probably attributed to the material as I was able to do a bit better, but not 100%,
on the opposite side that I milled 2nd.   My better test indicator will be here by this weekend, so I can better dial things in and/or evaluate it for any issues.

Rotary Table:
I researched this quite a bit.  I already had a HF 3" rotary table, but it's pretty limited to the size you can mount on it.  I saw reference to quite a few people using a 6"
and some a 5".   The 5" was hard to find and the 6" is way more common, so I chose this size.  I put the RT on my mill table and I don't think you could go with anything bigger
and still have clamping options.
There are quite a few choices out there actually, and the main consensus was that the Indian made ones are pretty crappy, and the Chinese made ones are slightly better,
relatively speaking.  I bought a Vertex HV-6 (horizontal / vertical), which was made in Taiwan. Look for Accura / Vertex or YUASA as a name and/or Meehanite as the material.  
Of course there are better units out there, but I'm trying to maintain some sort of budget  and went for middle of the road.
I also wanted to have 4 slots in the table and a MT2 center hole, so think about what features you want.  
I didn't get the tailstock or dividing plates.. I don't think I'll need those right away; they're pretty common and should be for some time, so future availability shouldn't be an issue.


if you want to see photos of anything, let me know.. I did everything tonight, forgetting to take photos as I did have the video camera set up.

Thanks for the Updates...i check this a lot, since i;'m going to be using it as a baseline when i get my own, hopefully this summer

ETA:  I was flipping through the ENCO catalog last night, their prices seem reasonable for tooling..although their machine prices for what appears to be the same stuff is higher than the Grizz

Enco has some nice stuff.

but....

But... Enco is the Kohls/Bed Bath and Beyond of the machining world (IMHO)
you don't want to buy anything from 'em without a coupon.
They regularly run sales, if you join their email list. 10-20% off or free shipping once or twice a week or so.

The 20% coupon gets things close to and sometimes below what you can find things for elsewhere, so you have to price shop.

if prices don't mean much to you, then go ahead and order from them, they have great customer service and prompt shipping.

if you followed the supplier thread (I'll add a link if I can find it), there are a lot of places that have great service.

Most of my stuff is either price-shopped off ebay, Shars, Enco or KBC.

here is a quick photo I took with my cell...

this is the 2x2 6061-T6 I faced last night
this was the reverse side, down and back at 0.008"



it's sexy smooth

Looks good, thanks for the updates.

I put the aluminum block on my surface plate.. measured around  0.0005" or better.

so I'm pretty impressed with that, given I wasn't 100% confident I had the block squared up in my vise properly.




I finished up the rolling base for my hydraulic press today...I put a tray in the bottom so I can put my press plates and jack handles down
below and not worry about them falling off when moving the thing around.


I found a use for the plywood crate the mill came in.. I'm going to make table covers that fit on either side of the vise, protecting the table from tools and
keeping chips out.

Red, you mentioned that if you could do it all over again you would get a different machine.  What machine would you go with?

This will probably turn out to be okay and I really haven't put too much thought into it, but
if I did, I'd probably save some more money and find a Bridgeport (or clone).  Something with better capabilities.


I'm just bent having spent a lot of time trying to fiddle with something that was brand new. But thats just me.  A crusty old timer
I will make the best of this...till something better falls in my lap

Man, that must be annoying. Improper assembly. I guess this is why you tram, right?

The arm for the DRO is really close to the Z-axis handle and before I took off two of the handles from the quill, it was kinda in the way..



So I decided to make a longer arm... I have some square (rectangular) tubing, but it was a little bit bigger than the oddball size from the factory.
I decided to make an adapter  between the OEM mount and the  tubing I had... here is the basic shape after facing



The finished product before assembly.  everything was done on the mill except the tapping, which I did by hand.



Assembled parts



Installed on the mill.

Here are some photos of the Vertex HV-6 rotary table on my mill table
in case you were wondering how much space they take up.

(ETA: there are a few photos on page 4 with the table removed and a note that the 7/16" T-nuts for the G0704/G0759 also fit this rotary table.)

btw; that's not rust, it's just that crappy PITA preservative I haven't finished removing...

Probably not bad for light use.
Bolting down is the ultimate vibration killer.

When we needed a mill and lathe in one of our office buildings we cut the basement slab., installed a 24 inch thick 15 foot x 20 foot slab on bedrock, then bolted to it.

We engineers are weird that way.

You should have seen the slab under out vibration table.
The table itslef was 12 ft x 12 ft.

Took multiple Unholtz-Dickie drivers.

Each one about 5 feet in diameter coil with a 12 inch piston.
Huge water cooled 'speaker drivers.'

Able to exert a couple tons of force each.

I went to edit my videos the other day and encountered a problem with the software (Openshot)
an app I've used many times before, and it was a great program.

Figuring things might be different tonight, I tried again.. no dice.  quite a few others are bitching about similar problems
seems they updated it and it hasn't worked right since.  

So I'm going to look at doing things another way.

I was very close to buying one of these Mills. Now that I've seen your experience with it I may look at other models. Too bad because I really liked the grizzly.

Thanks for all the info and congrats on your new mod duties.

Holy crap... You cant win for losing. These mills sound like a horror show. Hate to say thank you for taking a bullet for me Red but.... Thanks

Crap, that's disappointing to hear

Tag since the subscribe button, both the one at the top of the page and the bottom doesn't work for me on this page. They just take me to my subscriptions page. Maybe Grizzly coded this page?

Shit...... Bridgeport is NOT an option for me, room is too tight, and even if it wasnt, physicaly getting a "Real" Mill into the space is well-nigh impossible.  im limited to something smaller, i was pretty much counting on that exact machine, and from the youtube videos i thought it was GTG.

Take a look at the Precision Mathews models.  The owner seems to do a good job when it comes to CS.  They are pretty much the same machines, but the PM models have a better warranty and supposedly does a better job with QC.

As long as you treat the chinese machines as a mill kit (not a plug and go machine ) you can be happy with them. you usually have to do some work on them to be sure. (I have owned both a HF mini mill and now a old 2hp mill drill. (the one that is bigger than current production)  I am still in the refining part of the big machine and honestly if I was not moving cross country in 5 years or so I would have a bridgeport.  (and a mini mill for the small stuff. I really liked my mini after I modded the crap out of it. )

It pretty much sounds like it was assembled completely wrong.... Downside is that Grizzly doesnt check the machines when they come off the boat, they just stick them in the Whse and ship them when the orders come in.  Still doesnt excuse the runaround though

OPs request