When you're three years out of college paying market price, out-of-pocket for every piece of every project you pursue, you become prohibitively frugal. When it gets so bad that you're spending your Saturday nights following a Craigslist ad to a storage unit an hour outside of town to try and save money on machining, it might be time to control your own fate and invest in a modest lathe/mill setup. Now that each of my projects are single-use and each accrues a four-figure machining bill, it's killing me and my time has come. I need to make a shouldered nosecone tip and some transition rings for TiNY, and there literally couldn't be a simpler machining project, so the opportunity is ripe. Becoming a competent machinist isn't a bad resume addition either, and is something I've wanted to do for a while. When I reached the same conclusion about driving stick, I bought a stick shift truck for $1500 and sat in the dealership parking lot until I could figure out how to get it out of the lot (only stalled it once). Three days later, I had it down. Only way to do it. Felt great, and now I look at people who can't drive stick funny because it was literally that easy. Anyway, I've been reading up on these, and wanted to share some preliminary conclusions I've reached and crowdsource opinions from those more knowledgeable than I:
Avoid Harbor Freight. It seems that Casper's Harbor Freight mini-lathe died on him - I've sunk thousands of dollars into HF tools over the years, and the answer is always that they're generally fine and you feel smart for not paying exorbitant DeWalt prices. My friend recently had a $300 drill press get creaky on him, no biggie - but if it's a $1,000 tool and I'm stuck with the good old Central Machinery nonexistent warranty, I'll be pissed. My thought is to have a bit of foresight and shoot for a half-step above Harbor Freight. Interestingly, their prices aren't much cheaper than seemingly better other options - Grizzly, Bolton
Shoot for a size above benchtop. I don't fly snap ring cases, so this will be used almost exclusively for making nozzles, closures, nosecone tips, etc. It seems that it's a struggle on a 7x12 making things larger than 3" or so in diameter, so I'll likely shoot for a 9x20.
Prioritize an out-of-the-box solution over a reclamation project. To each their own, but this will be going in the living room of my apartment, so I'm shooting for a smaller tool anyway, and the attitude here seems to be you can get a bigger used tool for the same price as a smaller new tool. In my current situation, if I need a hammer, I go to Walmart and buy a hammer, so I'm not in a position to be bringing a quarter-ton piece of equipment into my apartment only to have to buy tools one-by-one to rip it apart and tinker with it. I'd rather have a 200 pound piece of equipment ready to go out of the box. Buy tools to fit your application, this is mine.
Lathe/mill combo? In my recent projects where I've outsourced the machining, the lathe operations and mill operations were almost a perfect 50/50 split - seems a decent benchtop version of each can be had for ~600, but in for the sake of simplicity, maybe something like this is better? https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Bolton-Tools-16-x-20-Precision-Combo-Metal-Lathe-Mill-Drill-Machine-BT500-/252164997975 Seems there's a Grizzly option that's roughly the same price, and an added benefit is that it's a pretty sizeable lathe for the application.
Thoughts, please, and I'll aim to push the button next paycheck.
-prophecy
Avoid Harbor Freight. It seems that Casper's Harbor Freight mini-lathe died on him - I've sunk thousands of dollars into HF tools over the years, and the answer is always that they're generally fine and you feel smart for not paying exorbitant DeWalt prices. My friend recently had a $300 drill press get creaky on him, no biggie - but if it's a $1,000 tool and I'm stuck with the good old Central Machinery nonexistent warranty, I'll be pissed. My thought is to have a bit of foresight and shoot for a half-step above Harbor Freight. Interestingly, their prices aren't much cheaper than seemingly better other options - Grizzly, Bolton
Shoot for a size above benchtop. I don't fly snap ring cases, so this will be used almost exclusively for making nozzles, closures, nosecone tips, etc. It seems that it's a struggle on a 7x12 making things larger than 3" or so in diameter, so I'll likely shoot for a 9x20.
Prioritize an out-of-the-box solution over a reclamation project. To each their own, but this will be going in the living room of my apartment, so I'm shooting for a smaller tool anyway, and the attitude here seems to be you can get a bigger used tool for the same price as a smaller new tool. In my current situation, if I need a hammer, I go to Walmart and buy a hammer, so I'm not in a position to be bringing a quarter-ton piece of equipment into my apartment only to have to buy tools one-by-one to rip it apart and tinker with it. I'd rather have a 200 pound piece of equipment ready to go out of the box. Buy tools to fit your application, this is mine.
Lathe/mill combo? In my recent projects where I've outsourced the machining, the lathe operations and mill operations were almost a perfect 50/50 split - seems a decent benchtop version of each can be had for ~600, but in for the sake of simplicity, maybe something like this is better? https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Bolton-Tools-16-x-20-Precision-Combo-Metal-Lathe-Mill-Drill-Machine-BT500-/252164997975 Seems there's a Grizzly option that's roughly the same price, and an added benefit is that it's a pretty sizeable lathe for the application.
Thoughts, please, and I'll aim to push the button next paycheck.
-prophecy