Small bench top lathe, milling machine...

[TORQUE THIS]

Anyone have one??



Are they junk???

 

[krs]

You mean the "mini-mill" and "mini-lathe", right?



If so, they are definitely not junk but they have limitations because of their size. Pretty amazing what some imaginative people manage to do with them. They're not bad learning tools either, for someone who wants to break the ice on the home machining lake.



Here's a collection of links that will take you into the lathe world. I'm sure that within those you'll find paths to the milling aspect as well: http://www.mini-lathe.com/Links.htm

 

[TORQUE THIS]

Yup, like this one!

 

[krs]

Ohhh, the Smithy.



Again, a lot of neat stuff has been and is being done with those too.

In general, people who have had those combination machines often say that it's better to have seperate machines for seperate purposes and the combination ones like Smithy do both functions but don't do either one as well as individual machines can do.



Smithy is one of the best of the type, I guess. I had one of the mini-lathes once. Pretty much all I did with it was rebuild it from new, honing all of the moving parts to make it work smooth and easy, paint it and sell it in ebay.



It was a 7"x14" lathe and by the time the chuck, tailshaft, and toolholder(s) took their space it left about 4" for a piece of work. Too small to use almost.