Warco milling machines

Hi everyone,

I am now considering buying a Warco mill, I am interested in the HV universal mill.

Are these machine accurate and reliable, as I have no experience of Chinese mills.

Any help and advice welcome.

I have a WM16 with a 2MT spindle; I would have gotten the WM18 but got some tooling with the price difference, It fits nicely into the garage/mancave along with my WM250V-F lathe & other bits 'n' bobs one accumulates doing 'our hobby'. The mill has performed most admirably with all that I have given it to do; as with the lathe albeit I don't give either silly D.O.C. so I can only recommend Warco from my perspective, both decent machines.

George.

Hi George,

thanks for the input, it seems like a mine field. I will be patient and get as much input as possible.

This and the WM50 are very new to their range and beyond most amateurs so there won't be much under that name so you need to find the equivalent name used by other dealers in the past to extend the search range. Given the price difference there doesn't seem much reason not to go for the bigger WM50.

I see the HV has iso30 spindles which is a step up from R8, and tooling is quite easy to obtain.

At your budget, you have a very good choice of machines from Warco, Axminster and Chester, to name three off the top of my head.

Point to bear in mind, not knowing your power situation, HV is 240V/1ph and WM50 is 440V/3ph
DaveD

Manny, I started with a WM16 it gave me good service, I traded up to a VMC

as it was more to my needs plus I'd moved house and had a bigger

workshop. I also have a Warco WM250 lathe they both do all I ask of them.

Mark P.

Hi everyone,

thanks for responding to my query. I have single and 3 phase at home so voltage no issue.

I prefer 3 phase from my experience. I like the look of the HV mill but the lowest speed on the vertical seems a bit fast.

The bigger mill is not much more but getting some what heavier. Both machines remind me of the Elliott omnimill 02.

Since i have never used foreign machine, I just wanted to know if they are accurate. Lets say milling a 20 inch long 2 inch square block.

How parallel would it be ? within .0001 inch??

Same with the spindle how much run out can I expect??

Maybe I am to fussy over numbers. Or dreaming.

I think you're dreaming! Milling parallel to 1/10,000 of an inch!! I'd be happy to get within 10 thou with my machine ( a Warco VMC ). Surface grinding might come close to your requirements, even then you are talking about accuracy not normally attainable with "hobby" kit, even if it's at the top end of the market.

I'm by no means an expert and someone who is will soon shoot me down in flames if what I said is balderdash!

John

John,

I think you are perfectly safe to fly another day!!

Bomb-proof if you have landed, too!

I suspect the .0001 was a typo for .001

Of course they are both just modernised versions of the old Elliotts which I assumed was one of the reasons you were looking at the HV if you still have your omnimill or at least some of the Int30 tooling.

415V 3 phase VFDs are cheaper than 2 to 3 phase upconverters so you could bring the speed down. It does seem odd that the smaller machine has slower speeds.

Accuracy keeps coming up as a question on the import machines, both lathes and mills. There have been reports on here about people stripping a machine and finding awful finish, poor contact areas on slidways etc. I think the machines do all meet their final test inspection in the factory and the foreman breathes a sigh of relief and pops it in the crate quick. Some are going to be 'Friday jobs'. The ones that fail go round a cycle of rework until they pass.
You don't hear/see reports from people whose machines perform perfectly so it is less easy to get a true evaluation of their performance. Some will lose adjustment during the shipping but since very few amateurs have the equipment to measure that it would go unobserved, and commercial users won't be reporting on here. Again you might do better to find the equivalent model sold in the USA and ask for reviews on the PM forum which pride themselves on being professionals only.

Hi,

I just wanted to thank everyone thats put ideas forward.

I have decided against warco for now as the replies have put me off.

To start with my mill was just tested with a bar on the table and a 50 thou cut 16 inches long and measured .

There is only .0002 difference in reading measured with mitutoyo mic.

I just wanted something more modern with a fine quill feed for fine boring and also having matching spindle tapers.

Thanks Bazile for all your common sense replies. I have allways sought perfection in any work/hobby.

Hi Manny

If I had a machine with that sort of accuracy I wouldn't be looking for a modern equivalent.

Emgee

I have the chester version of the HV mill, not a bad machine, ive had mine about 6 or 7 years and it get used pretty much every day and its been fine, only issue i have changing the belts on the horizontal mill can be a real pain, From a personal point of view unless the horizontal is esential, i would buy the wm20, or better still the axminster tools version, of the bridgeport, much cheaper than the warco version.

I've got a Chester 830VS which is single phase with an R8 taper. Perfect for my requirements and workshop size constraints. Its not got quite enough travel to mill 20 inches in one pass but you can certainly get a 30cm workpiece parallel to 0.02mm quite easily. Probably do better than that with a bit of care holding the workpiece..

Lacks a power feed for the quill though and that's next on my project list....