Buying a mill - What basic Toolkit?

Hi, I recently bought a lathe and am now thinking of buying a mill, possibly a Sieg SX2. However, not being experienced with these, I was wondering what essential pieces of equipment that I also need to buy to go with it and I am talking about basics. I saw Arceurotrade's advert for the SC4 lathe package and was really looking for a list of essential kit like that.

Thanks for your help.

Keith

Go this little lot with an SX2.7 recently possibly a couple of items you may not need

Basic kit of bits-

Collet holder and six collets probably ER25 on the SX2P

Machine vice about 80mm wide

Set of hold down clamps,nut, studs etc

lever DTI and magnetic stand

Few basic Milling cutters say 3-flute 6, 10 & 12mm dia

An edge finder is an absolute necessity for acquiring the edge of the workpiece, centres of holes etc.

In the medium term, the next semi-investment for the milling machine should be a DRO and possibly a power feed for the X axis if you have the budget.

Murray

As ever, it all depends. If you are going to make replacement parts for old machinery, you will need different kit from making parts useful to modern astronomers, and different again from any mass production working. The only advice, in the absence of more information, should be 'Reserve a sum of perhaps half the cost of the mill, and use it to fill needs as and when they arise.' And it doesn't matter how much kit, and how fancy, unless you are prepared to make mistakes and learn from them, and then find out why things went wrong, and learn from that too.

Cheers, Tim

No to all of the above.

Oh dear, this topic comes up every few months and the same bad advice gets repeated. So to save me time typing better advice can be found on the St Albans MES website.

Agree with Muzzer about the desirability of an edge finder and DRO set-up.

For inexperienced users the Huffam style edge finder (wiggler) is probably easier to use than the traditional type linked to by Muzzer. On contact with the edge the probe walks sideways up the edge with a considerable, and easily seen, deflection. Real Huffam types are relatively expensive, around £50.00 a set but have a nice spring loaded nylon on polished steel pivot making them free moving and very repeatable. Getting into the tenths thou region if you have good feel and technique.

The cheap, under £10, 5 piece sets have a collet style holder which is inevitably a bit stiffer but generally they work well enough for a thou or so accuracy once you've dialled in your feel for a consistent error. The uber cheap set I got for my first mill was a consistent 1.5 thou out in my hands. But what do you expect for £1. These days it has the needle point permanently fitted for picking up marked out lines and prick centre dots.

Its arguable that a DRO is almost essential for self taught folks if they are to get up to speed quickly without too many Ooops errors. Old fogies like me tend to forget how much practice it takes before you automatically keep track of handle turns. Not a tool per se but setting up some sort of ruler scale on the X and Y axes can era great help. Section out of a school rule will do if you have nowt else.

Clive.

One of the additional "bits" that I bought with my mill was a set of ground parallels

**LINK** (usual disclaimer)

I have found them most useful for all sorts of setting up, both in a vise and on the mill table. A bit of an outlay but I wouldn't be without them. Not an everyday use item but certainly often in use.

John

That seems seriously limiting to me! I don't believe anyone ever uses just ONE cutter? What about drills? So an ER25/32 collet chuck(depending on the size of the machine) and the set of collets that covers all of that forever is good value.

A vice seems like a no-brainer to me; I rarely use anything else.

Making several appropriately sized T-nuts and clamps is hard to beat as a first job for the machine/machinist.

After that, the jobs you do will dictate what you buy next. I've a bunch of stuff bought for mine over the last ten years, some of which looked essential(angle plate, fly cutter, V-blocks etc) but has never been used

Having read the very sensible St Albans advice, I found I'd started closer to Jason's list. Main difference was I bought a full set of ER32 collets with a collet chuck and a set of milling cutters, some of which I've never used. The mill came with a drill chuck included - most do I think. A dress-making pin and blob of plasticine substituted for an edge finder, and off-cuts for parallels. For a little while...

Contrary to the St Albans MES advice ... I suppose it's fair to say that the 8" Rotary Table was [effectively] my first purchase for the small milling machine. In fact its inclusion as an integral part of the machine table assembly was a major deciding factor in the purchase of the BCA.

In my biased opinion ... All small milling machines should be built this way.

MichaelG.

Seems rather limiting to me too; and quite old fashioned?

Andrew

As above a sticky pin and a packet of Rizlas are cheaper than an edge finder. There are two questions to answer as far as accessories go and they are how to hold a cutter and how to hold the job. The reality is that you will eventually own most of the options for both. To some extent having an idea of what you may want to hold can help,with your decision, so run through how to set up some of the jobs you may have in mind and this may lead you to an answer. For my own situation a vice is very useful but a clamp set has more flexibility and if you envisage machining large items a vice may be of no use at all. For tool holding an ER chuck is now probably very useful and a popular choice but direct collets give a bit more headroom if that is important. I don't think there is a hard and fast answer to what to buy, ask 10 people and you will get 10 answers all are valid but think what you want to do and that startup list will hopefully fall into place.

Mike

Jason is hiding his light under a bushel.

His milling for beginners' series starts in MEW 261

You might find Arc offer a beginner's milling bundle in that issue.

Neil

.

Is it true that it can't be shipped to St Albans

MichaelG.

I think Mike must be a mind reader, he has worked out what the next couple of installments will deal with

I also got the same impression as Andrew in that the list seemed dated and was more likely aimed at buying old iron like a Dore or Tom Senior. R8 comments seemed to go against the recent thread and I can't see many buying an autolock over an ER system. Slot & Endmill terms are a bit out of date too, 3 -Flute would be a good all rounder to me and an end cutting 4-flute will plunge or ramp.

There are also a lot of people comming into the hobby that want to get making items for their hobby and would rather spend a few quid on say a set of clamp & studs rather than make their own.

J

One item I thought I needed but couldn’t afford at the time was a £50 clamping kit. This was lucky really as I wouldn’t have used half the items in the kit. I instead bought a couple of straps and step blocks for just a few pounds and used threaded rod or nuts and bolts I already had.

tool envy...........

I'm really interested in these posts - there's certainly more than one way to skin this particular cat.

Like Carl Wilson though I bought HH's book and thoroughly enjoyed making my own T-nuts, strap clamps and parallels amongst other stuff.

My mill came equipped with quite a lot of miscellaneous stuff - some good, some less useful but it gave me a start and I think I was pretty lucky.

Jon