Warco Major milling machine

Hello,

has anyone had any experience with the war i major milking machine. Is it capable of cutting steel. Are there any better value alternatives?

**LINK**

Trying to avoid the obvious humourous responses to your typo issues, I think querying if a normal mill can cut steel seems an odd question. This machine is very long established and has been reviewed many times on this forum. In case you're not familiar with searching the forum, use the search facility half way down the home page ( not the search box at the top of posts) and put in "Warco Major " etc and you'll find many answers and opinions on your query.

Regards Mike

Edited By Mike Hurley on 17/09/2023 21:03:47

Hi Harry, here's photographic evidence that my Warco Major cuts steel without any problems.

Regards Nick.

Nothing wrong with the mighty RF30.

The only complaint against it is that the round column is not keyed to the head so you lose position when you wind it up and down. That is really easy to work around.

The best modification for it is a flashing neon sign fixed to the start button. This should read, "Have you tightened the bolts?

best

Robin

All the hobby mills will cut steel, what you need to be asking is will it remove metal at the rate I want? If you are after industrial rates of metal removal you may want to look for something more substantial.

As said the round column machines have become less popular with the advent of many choices of dovetailed column machines that are now available.

Rule of thumb, operated properly, one Horse Power will cut one cubic inch of mild-steel per minute. The Warco Major has an 1100W motor, so it has the potential to cut about 1½ cubic inches of steel per minute. Don't!

'Operated properly' means cutter in good condition, at optimum depth of cut and feed-rate, with cooling and lubrication. The rule of thumb also assumes the machine is rigid enough to make the cut without bending, the drive train is man enough to take the strain without breaking, and that the motor is rated for continuous operation.

Industrial equipment is heavily built to meet these requirements - one reason it costs 6 to 25 times more than hobby gear. Hobby equipment is relatively lightly built down to a price, designed for intermittent cutting at moderate rates. (A 300kg Warco Major is lightly built!)

Most hobby mills can cut steel. The very light small machines used for model railway and similar work are the exception. Intended for quietly machining Brass, Aluminium, Wood and Plastics on a small scale they're not very rigid, the motors are small, and they run at high speed. They're good within their limitations, and can be operated inside the house. Although they can attempt steel, it's out of their comfort zone. A Warco Major will happily cut steel but is too loud, heavy and messy to run inside a home - separate workshop needed. It's not a production machine - don't expect it to cope with Piece rate work in a Victorian Sweat Shop.

All milling machines have limitations. Sadly I don't have room for my heart's desire, a Bridgeport. Much more capable of hard sustained accurate work than a Warco Major, yet Bridgeports are considered flimsy by big mill standards...

Dave

Correct! My Bridgeport is flexible in two senses. It is versatile, but also not very rigid. It performs better with smaller cutters running reasonably fast, unlike the horizontal mill but that weighs 3500lb.

Andrew

All milling machines will cut metal, fitted with suitable cutters.

How much metal can be removed in one pass will depend, assuming sharp cutters, on how rigid and how powerful the machine is.

A 500 watt mini mill (A hobby machine ) will not move metal as fast as an industrial 10 hp, 2 ton Cincinatti, or Kearney and Trecker. (Not that many of us have the space for the latter machines! )

For quite a few years, I have managed quite well with a smaller, 3/4 hp RF25.

Just don't expect a RF 30 to swing 4" diameter face mills to take 0.25" deep cuts!

Howard

As they say "Horses for courses "

All the above said the old belt drive Major is hard to break, but a pain to shift gear.

Having seen a Major in someone's garage it has to be said it's a big ole thing so check your workspace first.

.."better value alternatives.."?

..this in Caterham..? ..I don't know anything about it other than what is shown in the listing..

Ebay - Warco Minor Mill Drill

Edited By Diogenes on 24/09/2023 09:22:15

The fundamental issue with any milling machine is that it be rigid enough and powerful enough to drive a cutter at a speed and depth of cut sufficient t to ensure that it cuts, rather than rubs, the material in question. Rubbing destroys a cutter in short order so a cutter does need to go deep enough to get bite on the material.

Teensy, weeny shaving cuts are a bad idea because the cutter is so nearly tangential to the surface that it's harder for it to bite rather than bounce.

End mill book data for manual machines is generally based on 1/4 diameter step over (cuts) for a reason.

CNC folk running HSM (High Speed Machining) paths with small stopovers and uber fast spindles live in a different galaxy!

Even a Taig mill will cut steel, quite obdurate steel at that, quite happily given the right set-up and cutters (small ones). No one in their right mind would claim the two box sections bolted together frame is a poster child for rigidity. CNC versions with their inherently much steadier feed speeds do much better. As ever with baby machines its hard to maintain the slow, steady feed rates needed by hand so the steadier drive from a power feed or CNC works better.

Has to be said that most neophytes tend to want to over-speed. Ancient penguins like me aren't immune from that temptation either. Being spoilt by power feeds on everything except the Bridgeport Y axis (must get around to digging out the bits I've had for ages and fitting it) doesn't help.

Clive

We have a similar Taiwanese mill with R8 and a 500mm bed stroke at the museum with a single phase 1.5hp motor and we have shell mills up to 80mm diameter. The depth of cut and feed rate usable with steel is limited to a lot less than the shell mills are capable of but still usable. The round column is more bother than a knee mill, but with patience you can live with it. For the price of that Warco, you may be able to get a better secondhand machine.