Milling machine thoughts?

Hi All

I am looking to buy a smallish milling machine as I want to start building model engines.

I was looking at these with the R8 Spindle.

Sieg SX2.7 750w (£1425) Fixed head no DRO

Sieg SX3 1Kw (£1803) Tilting head no DRO

Amadeal VM25LV that they are doing for £1723 WITH a DRO fitted or £1295 without the DRO both tilting head.

I like the idea of a tilting head, far easier to tilt that rather than the work piece but would have to ensure it was trammed afterwards, again factory DRO on the VM25LV would be good but could buy a kit cheaper and get it without saving about £400.

Looking at the SX3, is the head handle easier to use with it at the front or is it ok on the ones on the column?

Is anyone using the above mills? Ideally the VM25LV & SX3, if so what are your thoughts?

Looking to spend up to £1800 on the machine plus collets etc and add to it later.

Thanks Rob

Hi Rob,

Welcome to the forum.

No direct experience of the machines you mention, but in so far as I own similar:

• DRO transforms a mill, so go for it! They remove the need for mental arithmetic and having to remember how many times the hand-wheel has been turned, plus backlash error is eliminated. Makes milling much easier, more so if your workshop mixes metric and imperial measure.
• Tilting heads aren't such a good idea. They tilt easily enough but tramming them back can be a right pain in the proverbial. The primitive mechanism relies on the operator to nip up tight without letting the head move, which is hard because tightening is likely to shift it. My best tram is about five minutes, my worst took over an hour, and included a ten minute walk to bring my blood pressure down. The cat narrowly escaped a good kicking. As it's usually easy to tilt the work, I don't move the head unless absolutely necessary. Some go so far as to permanently fix it which also improves rigidity. In practice, I rarely cut at anything other than right angles, and could do the same.

Dave

I have the X3 which is basically the older version of the SX3 without tilting head and a brushed DC motor and one of the main reasons I went for it was the front handle for raising the head as it's a lot easier (and safer) than reaching up to the column. The front wheel can be used as the fine feed which allows the quill to stay fully retracted which helps with rigidity and there is no risk of backlash.

Of the two Sieg machines if you can afford the extra I would say go with the SX3 as its a more substantial machine as well as having a larger capacity, I do also have the SX2.7 here to compare with my X3.

Hello Dave,

A good tip for tramming the mill head I was given years ago is to mount a lathe faceplate on the nose of the mill and bring it down flat onto the table, where it can be held under some quill loading while things are clamped up again.

Your quill wont reach that far? No problem if you have a cube or similar bolting fixture as I have, or even two angle plates bolted together to make up the essential shape if you don't have one of those.. It takes minutes.

David Wilkes of many videos trams his Bridgeport by simply using the flat face of an end mill holder brought down into contact in the same way. Being a professional where time really is money to him it is a quick and effective solution he can use in the middle of a job during the course of his work

Regards Brian

Garden engineering at it's best.

Tony

Thanks Brian! Why don't I think of tricks like that?

If Thursday's plumbing job goes well, I'll give it a try and report back.

Cheers

Dave

Tramming my mill(s) became much less daunting after I'd made one of these gizmos.
It's made roughly to a design by John Moore (Bogstandard), though mine has an MT2 arbor to suit both my Centec and Dore Westbury mills; his fitted directly into his milling chucks, so had a parallel arbor.

It's slightly different to most of the commercial ones, in that it's self calibrating.
To achieve that, it's essential that the arbor is exactly perpendicular to the bottoms of the two little feet.

I ensured this both by careful boring and assembly, but also by spinning the final thing in the Myford's gap bed space.
This limited the length, but it seems fine in use.
The arbor was fixed directly in the Myford's spindle with a drawbar, and the feintest skim taken off the bottom of the feet.

Note that the final fitting of the clocks, has the tubular outer section all contained within the bottom alloy bar; it actually only goes about 2/3 of the way through.
This means that one can stand it on a known flat surface, before fitting to the mill's spindle, and zero the clocks exactly. Effectively it self-calibrates, without needing to go through the normal rigmarole of turning the clock's supporting arm by 180° and constantly re-checking.

To use, fit the tramming gauge to the mill spindle and raise the table (or lower the quill as appropriate) until the stylus on each clock touches the table.

Tilt the head to correct any error, which shows as the clocks will display different readings.
One can monitor for angular movement whilst nipping up the mill head fixings.

Here's a couple of photos, there are more in the album;

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/albums/member_album.asp?a=55535

Note the differing clock readings showing a tilt anti-clockwise.

Bill

Hi Rob

I went through the same dilemma last year and having in a past life visited the Sieg Factory in Shanghai opted for the SX3 mainly due to the build quality and low down Z Axis adjusting wheel. So far it's been faultless.

I fitted a good quality 3 Axis DRO with magnetic readers from Machine DRO and have a photos and details of how it was fitted.

The only time I have ever needed to tilt the head on my Myford VMC was for drilling. It's hard to see the need for it with any other cutter or am i missing something (it has been known).

regards Martin

.

I suppose it depends upon what you are making, and how much special cutters might cost

MichaelG.

As I cannot tilt my millhead so therefore tilt my work I would think must be easier when you think of the number of times you use the mill in standard mode compared to tilted, then with the added complication of tramming to set it back to vertical.

.

Ah, but ... Mine [BCA Mk.III] has a registration pin to lock it in the vertical position

There is no provision to tram it, and I don’t need to.

Perhaps I should have written: I suppose it depends upon the machine; what you are making; and how much special cutters might cost.

Sorry for that omission

MichaelG.

Thanks for the replies.

Well so far it's looking like the SX3 wins.

For small jobs yes tilting the work would be easier but would always have the option to tilt the head too.

Arc can't supply till the beginning of May according to the website, been looking on the auction site, not much on there near me and would prefer a new one.

Home brew powerfeed will be on the list as well as a power draw bar and maybe CNC conversion in the future after the warranty runs out.

I also like the idea of the tormach tts style chuck system and have seen a few kits from China quite cheap with 4 ER25 collet holders and the R8 collet, hit and miss on quality I suppose.

There is a good video on YouTube for the power feed just fitting a stepper motor with no clutch, trade-off would be stiffer to move by hand.

Rob

Well just placed an order with ARC.

Decided on the Sieg SX2.7 in the end, I did contact Amadeal about the VM25LV but they are waiting on stock to arrive and it would not have been until beginning of May and I am to impatient lol

Very nearly ordered the SX3 but it was over £1900 with delivery.

Here is what I ordered:

I saw a review on YouTube for it and it looked pretty good, time will tell.There is no DRO on it so I ordered one from AliExpress, its an LCD display 3 axis 1um res for £182 delivered, hopefully I worked out the scale sizes right, I think the scale sizes are Y = 250mm, X = 450mm Z = 400mm

Now to wait patiently for delivery

Rob

Wow, just had a call from Arc, I have to say the chap I spoke to (Ian) was brilliant, I had ordered a coax centre finder that would have been to big for the mill, within minutes it was swapped for a spindle holder for my gauges, some 123 blocks and a depth gauge.

Best of all its on being delivered on Monday

Good to see they sorted you out, I messaged Ketan @ ARC earlier to say it would hit the top of the vice and suggested the gauge holder..

One place I worked at in the 70s had a Bridgeport with taper pins to set the tramming with after tilting. These had been added in situ and worked fine. IIRC the Varnamo I was working there had the same mod.

I'm thinking of getting the same one for my SX2.7. I've not fitted a DRO before, but the set looks very good value for money. I was previously wondering about using TouchDRO.

You've now made me wonder about getting the Coaxial Centering Indicator Set and I was already looking at the parallel bar set. They're expensive pets are these machine tools!

Edited By JasonB on 16/04/2021 07:12:34

Yes that's ............................... I saw the DRO on, when I spoke to Ian I confirmed the scale sizes were right for the SX2.7

Its 7 to 15 days delivery on the DRO.

Will let you know how it is when it arrives.

The Coaxial is apparently too long for the throat on the 2.7 even with the smallest tip fitted.

You are right on with the expensive pet, £2200 spent today and still need something to build yet!

When the mill arrives Monday I will have to take the column/head assembly off so I can get it down to the man cave easier, should be OK in 2 parts, will just have to check the tram afterwards.

Weekend job is to make space in the mancave now.

Got to start saving up now for a new lathe 😆 mine is a little Clark 300.

Edited By JasonB on 16/04/2021 07:54:04

Just to clarify with a the 100mm vice & ER32 chuck that Rob has gone for and with the head fully raised when fitted with the shortest stylus the top of the vice is higher than the indicators end and that is without the vices Swivel base. Throat (Y) has plenty of capacity it is the head height (Z) that is the issue with this particular combination. We have covered vice sizes on this mill in several threads and why the large vices can cause issues on the smaller machines.

If separating the two parts of the mill then pull out the dowel pins first as they are inserted at a slight angle

Edited By JasonB on 16/04/2021 07:56:40