Need advice on a mill / lathe

[canuck750]

Any machinists out there who can give an opinion on this lathe / mill combo?

http://www.smithy.com/granite-3-in-1

My small milling machine has crapped out for the third time in three years and I am done getting it fixed and the importer has not been of any real help. My old Myford lathe is pretty tired as well and at 7" swing is quite limited in what it can handle. I don't have much space to work with and am considering the combo units. I don't want to buy a piece of crap but I don't need professional grade equipment.

All advice appreciated.

Thanks

Jim

[sidecarnutz]

That looks very similar to the Shoptask unit I bought back in 1997. I like it. It has saved my bacon on a number of projects over the years. Holds a tolerance down to .001". I find that very acceptable. Changing out gears on mine to cut threads is a bit of a pain though.

[Skarsaune]

You're not going to have the rigidity to take the cuts that you would on fullsize equipment,  but obviously good work can get done.

[canuck750]

Thank you for the comments! Limitations as I would expect but sounds like a decent piece of tooling.

[pehayes]

I have a 2000 Shoptask and do reasonably good work with it.  The current iteration is far superior and rigid and with CNC/DRO built in.  There is a "3_in_1_Lathe_Mill_D rill" group over on Yahoo for discussion and advice.  Lots of Smith owners there.

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

[canuck750]

I have a 2000 Shoptask and do reasonably good work with it.  The current iteration is far superior and rigid and with CNC/DRO built in.  There is a "3_in_1_Lathe_Mill_D rill" group over on Yahoo for discussion and advice.  Lots of Smith owners there.

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

I have checked out the Shoptask web site, very impressive and CNC to boot! Not cheap but probably cheap for a CNC machine. This looks great but it is getting out of the price range I was considering ($3 ~ $3.5K).  If I could find a manual machine of that quality I think I would go for it.

Thanks for the info

Jim

[clubman]

Out of all of the Taiwan/China benchtop machines the Smithy/Granite is probably the best. Mainly for product support/parts availability and ability to hold reasonable tolerances. Capable of light (as in very light) production use. Saw one used in plastic toy prototyping with no problems. Main gripe with any combo machine is mill setup time and limitations. Not really a problem for the home hobbyist though. Should be more than capable for MC use.

[canuguzzi]

I had one but if you'll use it primarily as a mill you'll likely be disappointed. It works much better as a lathe. If you plan on cutting a lot of threads they are OK.

I sold it and got one of their BX-288 Mills, a beast for the bench top but after a good cleaning and shiming it worked very well. It was gear driven and a little noisey but could hog out material lime no ones business.

Smithy machines are expensive but if you must have new stuff it's a good way to go. You can do far better checking with surplus houses and getting a high quality setup.

If you do buy, see if you can get your tooling and setups elsewhere, you'll do much better for quality. Maybe they've changed on that end, I bought their machines in the late 90s and early 2000s.

[PeteS]

Have you checked auction prices for used tools? I picked up a J head Bridgeport and 12" (diameter) Rockwell lathe for 1500 bucks. The Bridgeport has Z axis feed and will doing boring. I hogged out  my 850 cases for 992 cylinders with it. Check out the papers and Craigslist for sales.

Pete

[charlie b]

Yep, if he had space for it I'd recommend separate mill and lathe machines as well.  But, if limited on space the combo units do OK.

Me?  I went with smaller stuff since most of my needs are for small parts.  7" benchtop lathe and similar size mill/drill.

[PeteS]

One other advantage of used tools is they will likely come with extra tooling. My Bridgeport came with a rotary table, collets and a boring head. The lathe came with 3 and 4 jaw chucks, a collet holder along with 1/2 dozen collets, live and dead centers and a taper cutting attachment.

[Rough Edge racing]

 My 1951 Logan 200 lathe stripped a spindle gear and back gear when a work piece jammed....Not the first jam......After searching around it's pretty obvious lathes in good shape are not inexpensive. I picked up this 1950's South Bend Model A 9 x 36 lather for 800 bucks. A bit on the small side but in very good shape... I have the modern quick change tool  holder that came with the Logan....I put an ad on CL for the broken Logan....300 bucks must have been a fair price because I had 10 calls and it sold the same day...

  The "new" lathe at my shop....damn things are heavy...

           

[neverquit]

It really depends on the type of work you want to do.  I watched their video and have seen similar units.  The lathe is probably its strongest point.  I would have doubts about the rigidity of the milling portion under heavy loads.  Also, there isn't much travel for milling.  If you anticipate only small milling jobs it would probably be fine.  Personally I prefer separate machines and have a vertical mill and a lathe.  I thought I would use the lathe more than the milling machine but the mill probably sees more work.  At times I wish they were smaller.  The mill weighs about 3200 lbs and the lathe about 1200 so rearranging the shop is no small task.  Also my lathe dates back to about 1970 and was designed to cut threads in English units and has no provisions for metric.  So they take up a lot of shop room and are not always convenient to use.

[canuck750]

It really depends on the type of work you want to do.  I watched their video and have seen similar units.  The lathe is probably its strongest point.  I would have doubts about the rigidity of the milling portion under heavy loads.  Also, there isn't much travel for milling.  If you anticipate only small milling jobs it would probably be fine.  Personally I prefer separate machines and have a vertical mill and a lathe.  I thought I would use the lathe more than the milling machine but the mill probably sees more work.  At times I wish they were smaller.  The mill weighs about 3200 lbs and the lathe about 1200 so rearranging the shop is no small task.  Also my lathe dates back to about 1970 and was designed to cut threads in English units and has no provisions for metric.  So they take up a lot of shop room and are not always convenient to use.

My old Myford ML7 lathe was built in the early 70's and I got it for cheap due to it being pretty worn out. Since then I have replaced bearings, misc parts etc but it is pretty tiny. The mill I bought is from China, cost be about $1700.00 and the damn thing has gone through two motors and an electric board, not once did the fuse blow just the expensive parts inside. Now the mill is toast again, third time in three years, warranty done and looking at another $700.00 to repair. So this got me thinking that perhaps I could get into a larger lathe and a mill with a combination unit and free up some floor space in my very crowded shop. Used lathes or mills for that matter just don't show up around here, if they do they usually are big machines for industrial use. I like the simplicity of the Myford, just forward and reverse and three positions for the drive belt and change gears. Maybe I should just keep the Myford and get a better milling machine? I do not make or work on very big items, and I am not skilled enough to tackle anything intricate.

[pyoungbl]

Just to add a data point:

I'm not a machinist.  I'd love to have those skills.  On the other hand I love to learn new stuff (that keeps you young) and find machining to be a wonderful challenge.  With that said, I found a slightly used Bridgeport mill.  She's a heavy bitch but has a heart of gold.  I can do just about any milling I want on this very simple machine.  Oh, I added DRO to keep things simple.

After having a bunch of fun with the mill I bought a Grizzly lathe (13X36).  Between the two I have about $5.5K invested.  As a retiree I'm not looking at a ROI as much as a fun return on time.  I am learning lots of new things and, incidently, making stuff that is useful when it comes to working on my bikes.

The bottom line is that you can buy a super duper CNC machine that will do everything you program it to do.  On the other hand you can take the low tech approach and buy some really heavy duty manual machines that go for cheap because the production guys want CNC.  If you want to produce lots of high quality stuff the CNC approach makes sense.  For one off experimentation the low tech path is attractive.

For a physically small shop you are in a bind.  The good old stuff was designed for a large shop.  My Bridegeport weighs over 2,000 lbs and is a real hulk.  It's also very stable and damn near indestructible.  Newer 3-in1 stuff will be lighter and thus less stable.  You will have lost time going from mill to lathe.  You have a tough choice, good luck.

[sidecarnutz]

Wow, the prices on this stuff have really gone up since I got mine. In 1997, I got my new Shop task for $1700 including truck freight to Richmond Va. I drove up there and they loaded it on my MC trailer for the trip home. Seems like a bargain now.