What is the best lowest price but good quality milling machine?

As a beginner in model live steam engineering I'm building up my power tool collection.

What is the cheapest but reliable mini milling machine? (Not CNC) Can such a machine be purchased for less than £300 but be sufficiently robust and accurate for engineering steam loco components?

Also can a milling machine be a substitute for a pillar drill to save me getting one of these too?

thanks

Edited By Simon Robinson 4 on 17/06/2016 22:47:41

Question 1: No; at least not new, secondhand may be - my horizontal mill was £145 plus VAT, although at 3500lbs it doesn't count as a mini mill

Question 2: Yes, 99.99% of my drilling is done on the vertical mill, I use the drill press about once a year. Of course a quill on the mill helps when drilling

Andrew

I'm kind of chuckling here Simon as that question is the most open ended in the hobby. Sort of like "What's the best, cheapest car for the school run?".

New? Used? Foreign? Domestic? Capacity? Space available? How large is the loco?........

For your second question, it's my opinion that any mill decent enough to do the milling required will also handle any drilling required.

Many others here are much more qualified to answer the first question.

Pete

About the cheapest small mill that would be suitable for anything but the smallest work is the Sieg X1. It comes in several guises, probably the best being the one sold by Arc Eurotrade. This also seems about the cheapest but is £439 so above your number. I know a lot of people use these very successfully, look at ...

**LINK**

Yes you can use it for drilling but by the time you've put the chuck in the spindle there isn't much daylight left underneath. I don't have a pillar drill but I do have a milling machine I bought for having a lot of clearance under the spindle for boring long items.

Hi Simon, you don't say what size steam loco components you will be machining, but you may wish to consider the Clarke CDM10 mini mill or the CDM300 milling/drilling machine at **LINK** , as well as those already mentioned elsewhere . For less than £300.00 you probably have to look at a used machine in the second hand market. The price of any machine will resemble the level of accuracy where ever you buy one.

Regards Nick.

It is, perhaps, worth bearing in mind that all the locos described by LBSC and Martin Evans (mostly) were designed to built without a milling machine- all the milling required was undertaken on the lathe with an angle plate or, for the wealthy, a vertical slide. It would seem, therefore, that even the smallest milling machine should be more than adequate for building locomotives- in 3 1/2" or 5" gauge at any rate.

HTH,

Rod

Do you have a lathe? CMD10 can be bought from Machine Mart for £350 on a VAT free day.

I recently bought the SX2P from ARC and so far its doing the job, still feeling my way around it though.

I did spot an old mag article for ARC where they had an offer on for their small mill and £100+ worth of extras for the same price as the bare mill.

Hi Simon, I'm new to the hobby and purchased a Sieg X1 from Arc euro trade, the reason being it came with the longer bed as standard plus an accessory kit the other retailers weren't offering. So far I have been really impressed with it, in the process of building my first model and everything I've asked of it it has done with no issues. I also much prefer using it to drill than the pillar drill I bought. Great piece of kit and Arc euro trade are a great company to deal with.

Hope this helps

Mark

The CMD10 is the same as the X1 I think but with a short table. AET much better to deal with than Machine Mart IMHO.

With regard to Rod's point about LBSC and Martin Evans, in his book "Introducing Model Steam Locomotive Construction" Martin Evans said "The Amolco milling attachment (for Myford and Boxford lathes) will handle all the milling work on the average locomotive"

Trouble is Amolcos seem to be offered at high prices , but may be worth considering.

You really need to get in your car and drive to somewhere like Arc. Ketan will let you look at all of the machines and won't hassle you into buying anything.

As a beginner you will be pretty clueless when things don't turn out right. It will be much easier if you know that the machines and tooling you are using are up to the job. IMHO if you buy something without looking at it first you will regret it later.

David.

I purchased a X1L from ArcEuroTrade many years ago. It has done everything I have ever asked of it. It has a large table compared with the standard X1 (eg from Machine Mart). The motor is small, only 150 watts output power, so you cannot make massive cuts but having said that you can achieve the same result with a succession of small cuts. The good thing about being an amateur is that time is not money it is pleasure!

In addition ArcEuroTrade have a first class customer service reputation.

Mike

Ah but the rules are slightly different with a second hand market because the level of accuracy could be high but the price may not be, so long as the seller is unaware of it's true value. However, there are no standards to comform to like with a new machine(although it would've been built to one at the time of it's construction) so the buyer also has to know what he's dealing with.

With alot of older products there isn't always a direct comparison to benchmark your price with, so if you just want to be rid of a metal monster for some extra room it may not matter much to you how much it's worth.

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 18/06/2016 11:05:57

Whilst looking for bargains on ebay, non seemed to pop up, unless at the ends of the earth.

One machine which was local had about £75 worth of extras and sold for more than the new price? The company that sold it was only up the road also, so they could have had it brand new with extras for less money.

Madness.

You might want to look up government auctions. Schools and colleges often replace equipment on a regular basis. The biggest issue with older machines is their size and weight.

A bit of my post about Amolcos on 18/6 0955 seems to have gone missing.

It should have said these were also available as a stand-alone mill, with a base and table added to the attachment, and some have sold for reasonable prices.

Simon,

If you tell us where you are, someone might have something suitable at the back of the shed that is too much trouble to advertise.