Has anyone bought one of these milling machines that are advertised in Micro tools? I was wondering if they were worth the investment, and how well they worked.
well a guy that was here worked in a shop and he loved it sead it was a mini system made just for the trains
looks well made and had some parts he sead cost big bucks
you never see it cheaper
K
I guess from the lack of responses, either people don’t have a modeling size milling machine, or don’t know what they are, or, could care less. Hmmmmmm, I guess I had better stick to using my Dremel Tool.
I have an old Unimat, but I don’t know how many modelers have one. There are few left who build in metal. They are used as a lathe to make parts, and as a mill to either make parts or work on models. They are very useful as a drill press, much better than trying to use a Dremel which is too fast and too light weight to be stable. The Dremel is more of a hand tool (thought there are all sorts of attachments etc) and the Mill is definitely a bench tool. Speed range is totally different as the Dremel is in the thousands and the mill in the hundreds - much better for plastic. The big question is - what do you use it for. If you are making parts or working on metal bodies it may be useful. in fields other than MRR they are very popular and demand high prices on the used market.
Dick,
Since you asked specifically about a certain type of milling machine, the answer would more likely be the first one. What were you thinking you might use a milling maching for?
Tom
The August/Sept. issue of Light Iron Digest (www.lightirondigest.com) arrived yesterday. It has an article in it on milling machines that is probably useful. I don’t have time to recount the details, but the author uses a Harbor Freight mini-mill, which largely replaced the Sherline mill he used previously. He notes that the Harbor mill uses an R-8 collet, which is industry standard and he prefers. Apparently, the Micro-mark and an almost identical (to the Harbor Frieght mill) Grizzly mill use the #3 Morse taper collet. He notes that tooling for the R-8 collet is more common and thus easier to get.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
TOM: I have an FP9 shell arriving soon, and it may need to be milled a bit to get the GP-38 drive into it. I was told that if I had one of those Micro Tool hobby size lathes, they would do a great job on this an other light duty milling that I may have for hobby work, like plastics or resins. Any thoughts Tom?
That seems like an awful big investment to rework one locomotive. Could you not do the milling with a Dremel tool and a steady hand? I’ve done mill work on a drill press in my shop. Maybe you could find a machine shop close by that could do the work. By the way on the post about the unimat, do they still make these? If I was in the market for machine tools, this is what I would get. They are very versatile and made out of steel. I would question how well the Unimat would hold up. It looks like mpst of it is made of plastic. Tweet