I’m looking to make the jump from a drill press to a mill. I’d like to keep it affordable without buying imported junk.

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Pete

Craigslist. See what is available and come back.

Depends on your definition of affordable.

It'd be better if you stated your size requirements and budget.

Are you saying you won't buy imported or won't buy imported if it's not made well. Cause I wouldn't buy American crap, just because it isn't imported.

Personally, I'd rather buy a new, imported, machine, than some clapped-out domestic dinosaur. If you don't know how to evaluate a machine, how are you going to know if this antique is in good condition? The answer is, you won't. You'll find out, further down the road, when your parts  are crap, because the machine is worn. Then what?

I, too, was in your boat. My largest decision to not buy a full size mill was becuase I didn't have the room in my shop. Put it in the garage? Sure, I'd love to. However, above the garage are the bedrooms. I do 90% of my machining when everyone is sleeping, so that was out of the question. My search begun for the best, used, benchmill I could find. Yes, it took quite some time (3yrs). Some of the machines were ~800 miles from my home. Was I going to take the trip just to check them out, no. Also, people think their stuff is gold. Ridiculous prices for machines worth a fraction of the price. In the end, I bought a brand new Taiwanese machine. Precision Matthews gets the pick of all the foreign parts and you get the most for your $$ (regarding imports). Had I not been so stubborn, to find a used mill, I would have had my machine several years sooner.

Understand another thing. My brand new machine was ~$1800, delivered. I've already spent >$2500 in: vises, rotary table, chucks, collets, mills, boring head, etc. If you don't expect these costs, your machine use will be limited. Also, if you think you're going to find a gem of an antique, with all the tooling, for pennies, you're crazy. Can and does it happen? Sure, but those are few and very far between. And, again, how will you know the machine is a gem?

Depends what your definition of quality and affordable are.

I've got the hardbor freight mill.  You can buy its brothers and sisters from the littlemachineshop.  They're all pretty much the same and came from the same factory in china.  
It does fine for a weekend warrior thing.  I've used it to build tons of things I couldn't have done otherwise, and its fairly easy to upgrade.

Your next step up from the chinese mini mills is pretty much Precision Matthews and then hopping to a $5k tormach.  Unless you luck out and find an old bridgeport on craigslist.

It also depends on your location and if there is any manufacturing going on.

For instance, I am located between Cincinnati and Dayton OH. There is a ton of manufacturing/ fabrication around here.

For the last decade those oldder "mom and pop" one off type shops have been closing as the older generation running them have been retiring or expiring.

At one point there were too many auctions to even make it to them all to check out.

It was very easy to get a quality machine for very cheap, as most of them were just being grabbed up for scrap value.

There was also a bunch of tech and trade schools in the area downsizing manual machine collections to make room for newer CNC centers.

As has been said though, tooling is where you end up sinking a ton of money.

I have probably about $2000-2300 in initial costs with my mill and lathe, but close to $10,000 in tooling and other associated equipment to use them.

For me, it's just a hobby. I don't worry about making a profit with the equipment.

But it is always rewarding to make stuff from scratch, and that hobby supplements my other hobbies as well (guns, paintball, atvs, offroading, etc.)

Great questions. Thanks.

I have a barn, but I was thinking of a bench top mill. Budget: $500-$1000. That may be unreasonable.

Uses: boring/clipping cones. General gunsmithing.

Imported is fine as long as it isn’t garbage.

Craigslist only has a few mills. Nothing pops out.

IMHO, you'll get far more use from a lathe, with your given parameters.
I had a lathe for ~6yrs, before a mill. I couldn't see it the other way around.
You can't chop and thread a barrel with a mill (realistically)
However, I made entire suppressors, with many indexed features, using only a lathe.

I still use my live spindle, on the lathe, for many projects (just used it last night).
It's so much quicker than setting up the rotary table and you don't need to transfer a freshly turned part, from the lathe to the mill.

Milling on the lathe



Baffle Porting


Baffle Clipping


Done Completely on the lathe, with live spindle

How are you controlling index position in your lathe?  Did you make an index disc or something for it?

@Kuraki

I made an indexing plate setup, on the outboard side of the spindle. Yes, the plates are made from Luan plywood . They work great, are cheap, and I can make any pattern I need. I have several made for the common divisions. I make the pattern needed in AutoCAD and print 1:1, then machine the holes.




All operations, except alignment tabs, performed on the lathe.


Barrel ports kept inside rifling grooves


Tube end and end cap


Dropping some tube weight and adding features

Nice.  I need to make something similar.  More details on your live tool would be great as well.  Are you using some kind of variac and DC motor or?

@Kuraki

I bought a 1.5kv Brushless DC CNC Spindle. You can get a motor, VFD, Mount combo from Amazon, ebay, wish, aliexpress, etc. It has an ER20 collet spindle, so I bought a set of collets. I mounted it to a QCTP tool holder, but am in the process of making a dedicated dovetail mount. I made the mounting centerline offset from the lathe's spindle axis. I did this so I can flip the mount over and get a much broader range of mounting heights.

Here's me getting everything aligned


Here's before I finally hooked up the water cooling and moved the dividing plate to the outboard side

Excellent.  

Depending, a mill drill like an RF30 (show up under the ENCO brand name) would meet your requirements. My RF30 I got from a buddy was a couple hundred bucks with enough tooling to get started.

Personally, if you have the option, get a square column mill over a round column, I didn't, but the round column RF30 will do more than what most people need.

An okay import vice and multiple softjaws, dividing head, endmills (ball nose for clipping baffles), indicator dial, calipers, and gage blocks were my next purchases.

A lower cost DRO is nice if you don't like reading dials and trying to calculate backlash (in the process of installing on my machine).

You will spend more on tooling realistically than your machine.

Between a mill drill and an actual milling machine you do give up things like rigidity, but be honest, how accurate are the parts you are making?
Expecting tight tolerances on a clapped out craigslist machine of any type is unrealistic.

If you have power supply issues, keep in mind a lot of the mill drills are available as single phase 220v. Mills like the Bridgeport are often 3 phase and will need a converter or a seperate wiring run.

And just to piss people off, the Bridgeport is just an overpriced mill drill.

I'll be following this.

I'm also looking for a mill.

I've gone back and forth between old iron and a new import.

I've missed a couple great deals by over the past year by being hesitant.

Right now the plan is to get a Bridgeport since parts are so plentiful. Although I don't have enough experience to properly evaluate a mill. That is the part that makes me nervous.

I've also considered a mill/drill as a temporary solution which would later just become a drill press.

There is a Bridgeport over in Port Townsend on Craigslist for $4200 just as an FYI.

Short of that there is a Jet Distributor and Grizzly in WA that both run sales on import machines.

Don't forget to look at the tons of Gov't and liquidation auctions. Not only are they located all over the country, the online buying include a freight charge calculator.

I bought a Harbor Freight Mini Mill, 550$ shipped. Plus a minimal additional $350 in tooling/accessories just to get barley started, so even the "cheap" stuff isn't cheap.

If you don't want a full size mill try looking around for a decent used Millrite.  They are a 3/4 scale Bridgeport and are far more capable than a Chinese bench mill.

Attached File

A 16"+ mill is needed for 0% forgings, the beefier machine (vs a mini mill) to run cutters for the curve at the receiver extension, and hold the lower vertically while you open the receiver extension and tap it. Being able to take big chunks from the magazine well with each pass is also very welcome,  and you need a stiff setup to run the 5/32" drill bits down each corner of the magazine well for the interior corners (should be 1/16" radius per print, but 5/32" aircraft bits are significantly stiffer).

DROS are critical,  either the little caliper/scale ones that everyone sells on ebay and get a box to interface it with your tablet, or make your own using quadrature scales and some soldering.

Kharn

For the quadrature scale method, you need:
Encoder and compatible linear scale (>250LPI *4 = <0.001" accuracy), don't go sky high on the LPI or you'll over drive the serial port and cause errors when moving at speed.

This archived MS-DOS software and wiring diagram on a shitty computer from your basement. Do not use Windows! It can't handle real time inputs and will lose accuracy. Use the published LPI of the scale you bought to set the distance per encoder tick in the configuration file, it is much more accurate than calibrating it yourself.

No more screwing around with crappy Chinese calipers.

Kharn

@Kharn
I've been using a PM-25MV for lowers. Granted, I thread the extension in a jig I made for the lathe, but all other opps are done on the bench mill. With a 7/16" end mill, I can take ~3/8" deep milling cuts. It doesn't take long for the pocket to open. This is all without DRO's :)

That table sounds about the same size as my Enco, but mine has enough height on the head movement (when I remove a ceiling tile ) to be able to line up the tap and lower. DROs mean I don't make as much scrap when trying to use it long after I should be in bed.

Kharn

Hardinge, Delta and Clausing also made some smaller knee mills that are pretty sweet.  Usually sell for at least as much as their full sized counterparts, though

@Kharn
Mines blocking access to my crawlspace

I bought my Millrite for $1000 about a decade ago.  I went with it over a full size knee mill because it had to be light enough for me to move with a engine hoist by myself.  Mine isn't the one from the picture but is similar.  I spent a bit and added an X axis power feed and a DRO.  

It is certainly an older piece of equipment but they are often in really good shape since they sometimes saw relatively little use compared to a larger mill.  There is also a very active user group for them that has been really helpful and spare parts are still available.

I took my mill/drill apart and moved it from the driveway into my parents' basement woodshop when I was in college. Every time I clean out my garage to use the table saw, my dad threatens to pay some day laborers to disassemble it and bring it to my place in the back of their pickup. I only have a 1-car garage and it's full of shit. When I add on a two-car garage, buying a knee mill and selling the basement one as-is to make it the next guy's problem would be the easy way to go.

Kharn