Pro's and con's with a small verticle mill

Hi guys, just started to looks at small mills as I am quite tight for space in my new home workshop (internal workshop size 2mx7.5m).

The only mills I have ever used are Bridgeports at engineering school but something like that is just way to big for my current situation.

I had a quick look at the Warco stuff and there GH Universal mill seems to have a lot of bed travel on the bed for its size but I have no experience of these types of verticle mills.

Any advice will be greatly apprecisted

http://www.warco.co.uk/milling-machines/38-gh-universal-milling-drilling-machine.html

for the size of your workshop... single garage size, you should be able to fit up to a VMC vario in there comfortably. I have a WM16 & a WM250V--F lathe in my garage conversion with room for other stuff.

George.

I looked at the VMC vario but the bed has less travel than the GH universal and also is a deeper machine.

I was looking at just over 500mm of travel on the bed if I ever needed to get a small cyl head I'm there.

Also my workshop at 2M's isn't as wide as a standard garage

The large x axis travel may sound like a good feature on this type of mill but what you should realize with this design is that the support for the bed is quite narrow. The centre of mass of the bed and anything on it can be beyond the support.This means that for normal operation the gibs need to be loose enough to allow easy movement and as a result may not be able to keep the bed from tilting at the extremes of travel. The weight of the bed and whatever is mounted on it can cause it to sag where it is unsupported. Adding a power feed will contribute further to this problem. It does not matter too much for short items as they move the centre of mass towards the support but for something that requires the full travel it may result in a surface that is less flat than you expect.

Martin C

I'll second that, adding a larger weight single phase motor to the power x feed of my Centec 2B, as I didn't have 3 phase, has upset the horizontal accuracy for long work-pieces. I need to dig out the star point and convert the old motor to 240v 3 phase to restore, what I presume was, an accurate machine.

Bill

Ah, but that depends on what is already in his workshop, and what else he plans to put in there

As with all small machinery everything is a compromise eg small size = limits in accuracy, limited travel, limited size of table space, limited power etc

Problems with bed travel on small machines were also covered in your earlier thread here

I had a chat with one of are machinists at work and he suggesting getting a good small machine for at home and just pay a machine shop to do any large jobs on the rare occasion they may come up.

I saw this old Warco mill on eBay, does it look good value?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/322863871261