OPTIMUM MB4 | is this chinese milling machine any good?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
- After dropping a used Wemas WM3 with 1,4tons from ~1m height, i decided my next milling machine will be two magnitudes smaller, so i can handle it myself. After a bit of reading, i decided on the brand Optimum, since they should be the least crappy vendor from asia. Overall i am pretty pleased with the machine, the quality seems ok for the price, only the column is unfortunately out of square by quite a bit. So i will probaly shim it.
Link to Stefan Gotteswinter's video: • Optimum MB4 milling ma... if you want to support the channel, you can buy me a coffe:
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It's a good idea to completely disassemble them to clean the ways and screws etc, you'd be amazed how much grit and metal fillings will be on and in everything.
Thank you Christoph well presented vid. All done in less than 6 mins. Fantastic.
Hi,Christoph. I agree with you that these Optimum 45s are a good buy. As you already know Stefan has made some great improvements to his. Also another channel I watch is Jon's Workshop and he has the same mill with a different brand name which seems a very capable machine.
Dude, you are very methodical and your production is impressive, well done
Thanks for the comment ❤️
As Stefan quite rightly states in his review of any machine tool from China, they should be considered as a kit of parts which need stripping down, cleaning, de-burring and then assembled correctly if you want them to be anywhere near acceptably accurate. Once done they are very able machines.
Couldnt agree more
Finally the rongfu design is starting to evolve, the new base looks smart.
Super Video Christopher...and the music has a calming affect..: )..I in the market for a modern light hobby mill....one down from a RF45.....Craftex 601 might be coming my way...: ) Thanks upload...from Canada
Although many people are horrified at having a Morse taper in the spindle for a manual mill I think it is the best and most accurate solution for tool retention........for a CNC machine it's not at all practical where R8 or ISO 30 rule.
Where it does fall down is when you get heavy handed spanner tightening that has the tendency to freeze the tool in the taper.
At the last firm I worked for in the UK, before emigrating to OZ, we had a Bridgeport mill with 3MT and at one time the spindle had to be dismantled and sent away to get the overtightened tool out of it.....we cured it by fitting a serrated turn knob on the drawbar end that you had to tighten only with the hand......never had problems from the herd after that.
Here in Europe R8 shank tools are a rarity. With the exception of most Bridgeports which is why I would never buy a Bridgeport. Here in Switzerland, you would want an ISO30 or ISO40 manual machine. Or a W20/W25 if you are already a owner of a Schaublin or Simonet lathe. I have a small import Morse 2 milling machine, this makes me sad but at the moment I can't afford to rent a bigger space.
@@bensthingsthoughts For a manual mill the R8 is a very ideal mount as it leaves you with a spindle face that is flush at the bottom giving you extra spindle to table clearance, whereas if you have ISO 30 etc you need to have a shank and a chuck on the end that sticks out of the spindle by about 60mm.
I don't know if 2MT is a popular mount but I have a Berardi jig borer....Italian make..... and it had the 2 MT spindle, but without a draw bar, so it was only "as good" as a drill press for down pressure on drills etc which as I wanted it to be a mill was totally useless, so I cut the end of the spindle off half way in the quill and mounted an ER32 parallel shank chuck to the spindle end ......now I have a mill and with a 19/20mm collet takes all parallel shank tools with a 20mm diam shank......very economical, almost TTS.
Adding a DRO made it a Rolls Royce.....LOL.
It had laid for 35 years covered over at the back of my garage due to the 2MT spindle being unusable for milling......the next mod will be a power feed to the X axis.
I'd buy the mill but I can't afford the bloody tractor to unload it! Great review video, thanks from Dean in Oxfordshire, UK.
Great video. Great machine
A little advice from a BF20 Vario owner.. Take it a part as fast as posible and clean out the casting sand and dirt, put way oil all over the machine again👍 Always do this with chinese machine parts.
Thanks for the comment, yes taking it apart is on my todo list
That is always the best action with these import machines. I've seen several new ones of different brands and the casting sand residue is always there on all of them. Strip it down and thoroughly clean everything out.
As you are in Austria it's worth asking , what about Bernardo's gear in comparison ?
Can you share the 3d print dial indicator holder?
Hi Christoph, gutes Video. Warum hast Du keine Bernardo Maschine genommen? Ist die Optimum nicht teurer ? Was ist Deine Meinung dazu? SG
Servus,
Die Bernardo hätte mich in etwa gleich viel gekostet. Da es zuhauf Leute gibt die mit der MB4 zufrieden sind, aber nur relativ wenige überhaupt die Bernardo Maschine besitzen, wollte ich hier kein Risiko eingehen.
Außerdem gefallen mir die Optimum Farben besser, als die Bernardo Farben.
Nice. Of course you're not the only expert to have dropped a ton sized machine. I'm in the same rank, allowing my "professional mover" to load and NOT strap down a milling machine and an heavy lathe. At an uphill restart, both flipped inside the truck. The following hour, with 4 agitated men trying to upright them without all what would have been needed, was equally disheartening. But, both machines are repairable, I should get the lathe for free.
Good review.
I was thinking about mentioning Stefan's epoxy tramming video when you did.
What other mills did you look at or consider? I recently ordered a lathe through the local supplier in Australia and am looking at a mill in the near future. Right now I just want to get set up and started with the lathe and start making chips.
What projects with the mill do you have planned?
If i could afford it, i would have gone for a bridgeport, since they are more Universal and capable, but on the other hand, they are also huge, and take a lot of space.
They are also often pretty worn out, and the new bridgeport clones, are expensive.
I think the rf45 style mill, is for ita price the best you can get.
First projects will be a slitting saw arbor, a vblock, and a powerfeed.
@@ChristophLehner Good projects to start with.
Blondihacks and Stefan G both did slitting saw arbors. Stefan's was the usual Stefan magic but Blondi's was pretty good and looked a lot easier.
@@ChristophLehner If brand new Bridgeports were only 2 or 3K we'd all have 1.
But in the land of reality we take what we can get our hands on. After watching Rustinox I'd take a shaper if it dropped in my lap. There's a lot of stuff you can do with one of those.
If dropped in my lap, i'd take a small shaper, a surface grinder, a debit grinder and the list goes on, as long as i have space in my shop :D
@@ChristophLehner You forgot the Hermle 5-axis and Kern super precision machining centers. 👍👍👍
Have you tried using it? It will vibrate like a rattle snake when even a slight load is put on it. True?
I have buy MB4 too this summer, and when i take it parts i see how X/Y sadles x-guide surface is only roughly milled. Then they have try little bit scraped surface, and try make it look little bit better. Table X-guide surface is only milled without oil scraping or grinding
Considering the price, you can't really argue, that not all ways are handscraped....
For what it's worth i find, it's a very capable machine with a good workenvelope
Hi, I have this same mill and have been surprised with the amount of deflection between the head and the table, easily 0.05mm with a light push, in x y and z directions. The depth of cut can be very noticeably altered by resting an arm on the head while milling. I believe the source of this is the base casting, not the column or movement in the gibs etc. You might like to investigate this. I plan to fill the base of my mill with UHPC or similar.
Do you notice similar deflection in your mill?
Thanks for the comment, the mill is still on the palette it arrived on, since i have to work on our house.
But i am planning to mount the base to a concrete slab. I will keep you updated
CNC4XR7 on youtube filled his base with epoxy granite and noted a huge improvement (not this exact machine but i expect similar results with this)
Hello Christopher, sorry if I misspelled your name. I'm Keith from Michigan, USA and just bumped into your video here on March 17th. I'm past the 44yrs of machinery field and now I turned in a hobby, with a nice Lathe, however I just started 😀 with a mini mill. I completely took it apart and fixed all of the bugs. It's half the size what you bought. So tell me about yourself! And how is your mill doing for the project's you 🤔 made. Happy 😊 or disappointed?
Hello Keith,
Thank you for the nice words. I also just started out machining all together, i was more into woodworking. The mill is doing fine, for the room it takes it is quite capable. Recently i milled my qctp holder down, which are hardend. i took a 0.5mm doc without any issues (with a facemill).
What did you fix on your mill?
i should take mine also apart, clean it thoroughly and fix the oiling ports....
@@ChristophLehner On the Mill, it's called a machinist vise, clamping face is 100mm wide - 40mm high. Now this one will do nicely to hold round bars. But it isn't a professional grade. I currently don't have a ytube account. I'm limited to comments. Can't attach photos to send, you could see what I purchased. Which country you live at?
@@keithmonarch447 i am from Austria Europe
@@ChristophLehner I appreciate meeting you and also some nice exchanging conversations. Keith isn't bragging about myself. So far I'm a happy-go-lucky guy. Turning 65yrs this month. Most of my careers are positive ✨️. Traveling was fantastic 👌. I've seen 12 different countries, I haven't visited yours. I'll subscribe to your channel, take care now!!
It seems like a perfect hobby machine, but personally I rather get a used Arsenal FU251 or FU321, for not that much more money if any even. I see the place for smaller lighter duty CNC machines but in my opinion (from my personal experience) beefiness is a real must for manual machines, to compensate for the dificulty of maintaining precision with a light manual machine, and to also make up for the loss of productivity, due to the inability to use modern highly efficient toolpaths (and the time consuming nature of even setting up a second pass on a manual), to utilize modern tools.
Instead you must be able to rely on the beefy mill and beefy cutter to have the capacity to just take the cut, without vibrating the tool to pieces!
The beefier the better, that's for sure, but where i live used machines are almost as expensive as new ones....
For what it's worth, i find it a quite capable mill
In some miracle of fate, I walked into my local Harbour Freight for my three times a week visit and my friend there and his helper were trying to figure out how to get this "liquidation mill" onto the machine tool table. It was used (ish) looked very heavy and marked "clearance $689 as is". I said I think it would break your table if you could get it up there, but don't bother I'll take it. My friend said "we got 2 of them, this one was a floor model but the other one is new in box ... want that one? Yeah.
It was an early version of the Optimum 45s branded Xz _ _ _ or Xy_ _ _ or Zx_ _ _? It had a massive round column instead of the much better square type yours has. Otherwise identical but claimed to be "5hp 30A 110V" which I found very unlikely, but whatever. I bought it.
I later noticed it had yellow paint under the maroon paint it was sporting now, so I assume it made parts in China for years then got remanufactured for Harbour Freight.
I liked it a lot and ended up buying a power feed, 8" rotary table and lots of other goodies for it. I wish I never sold it honestly but made a fair profit. Never really knew what the power was but plugged into the 20 Amp outlet in the garage it wouldn't start in first gear with out wrapping a rope around the spindle and giving her a pull while pushing the switch. All other gears it would start right up. I loved the things I could do with the head tilted and the rotary table mounted to the table.
Lovely story :) why did you sell i
@@ChristophLehner Sold it and my 13X 40 lathe for a move ... kept my mill/lathe combo machine I've had for 25 years now.
The test measures are truly precision. How much you have paid for it? Would like to see how it works out after milling blocks. From my understanding that the OPTIMUM MB4 is an engineered German product which is produced in china. Are you using the clone or authentic OPTIMUM MB4? Thanks.
Arround 2.5k €
Idk if they are engineered in Germany or somewhere else, but they definetly come out of china, and there are various clones of this machine
@@ChristophLehner "Fertigung in Yangzhou / China
Seit 2003 produziert OPTIMUM einen Teil seiner Metallbearbeitungsmaschinen in der eigenen Fabrik im chinesischen Yangzhou mit deutschem Produktionsleiter und Qualitätsmanagement-Beauftragten. Entwicklung, Konstruktion und Qualitätsmanagement finden maßgeblich in Deutschland statt."
... Quelle: Frontpage von Optimum, genau vor der Nase. :)) War eine sehr diffizile Recherchearbeit ... beinahe Detektivarbeit (10 Sekunden Aufwand?:P). Nich bös gemeint, im Gegenteil: Danke für das Video!:)
"Manufacture in Yangzhou / China
Since 2003, OPTIMUM has been producing some of its metalworking machines in its own factory in Yangzhou, China, with a German production manager and quality management officer. Development, construction and quality management mainly take place in Germany."
... Source: Frontpage of Optimum, right under your nose.
So jealous about your milling machine amazing it how much it costs?
I paid ~ 2400€
I want to believe that the very first thing you checked for accuracy is that metal square you are using for measuring. You would be shocked how non accurate those are "out of the box". They are good enough if you are assembling a kitchen cabinet but not for measuring the squareness of a machine to a hundredth of a milimeter.
Hallo Christoph, das Video wäre interessant, die Einspielungen und Fotos nerven aber so extrem dass ich das Video nicht weiter angesehen habe.
Danke! Ich habe auch so eine im Auge.. das wäre einen vernünftige Grösse mit mMn gutem Preis-Leistungsverhältnis. Wie sind deine Erfahrungen seither? Grüße!
Servus,
Die Maschine ist ok, klar Zerpanungsmonster ist es keins, aber alles tut, man kann auch fräsen. Also für hobby Maschinen würde ich nicht kleiner gehen. Allerdings würde ich gleich ein paar Sachen einplanen.
Einen DRO, Vorschubmotor in X, Motor für die Z Achse.
Und ich glaube ich würde sie mir diesmal mit einer SK30 Spindel kaufen. Setzt man etwas in die warme MK4 Spindel ein, braucht man den großen Hammer um das Werkzeug wieder raus zu bekommen.
Gruß Christoph
So a year on from posting this vid. Do you like the mill?
I have bought too mb4. And i don't be so happy casting quality. It cost here in finland 3500€ and i have been waiting little more qualitu that money. But that is what i buy and that is what i get
What is the issue with your casting? Mine was rather fine. Sure more beefy would be nice, but as you said, you get what you pay for
I have optimum bf20 vario, and i have make myself nt30 spindle for my machine. It's much better than morse 2 spindle
Why do you prefer bt30 over mk2?
@@ChristophLehner Better bearing system, and now i can easy presetting my tools heights. And bt30 is more rigity than mt2
Hi, hattest Du auch über die Kami 350 nachgedacht? Ansonsten sehr interessanter Kanal! ;-)
Ja die kami war auch in der engeren Auswahl, vorallem mit dem steilkegel.
Aber die MB4 war doch um knapp 1k€ günstiger
@@ChristophLehner moin, ich stehe gerade exakt vor dieser Frage. Die Kami mit SK oder die MB4 mit MK4. Es sind aktuell 700e Differenz zwischen beiden. Ich frag mich nur warum es unzählige Leute mit der Mb4 gibt und keiner ne Kami hat. Kannst du aus Erfahrung was sagen ob beide Maschinen gleiche Qualität, Steifigkeit etc besitzen? Ich neige nämlich auch dtl zur MB4 möchte aber aufgrund der vermutlichen Z Kurbelei dem SK auch ne Chance geben.
Magst du noch elektrische Achsen? VG
@@movo6690 ich glaub Steifigkeit und Qualität ist bei beiden ziemlich gleich.
Beim sk wirst du halt mehr und billiger ans tooling rankommen.
Unabhängig von sk und mk würd ich definitiv einen motor an Z flanschen. das Kurbeln wird ziemlich schnell alt 😅
Und plane unbedingt einen DRO ein, das macht die Maschine erst so richtig funktional
@@ChristophLehner Danke, wäre super wenn du auch noch nen video vom Motorumbau machen würdest. Dein Untergestell werd ich mir vmtl kopieren. Wobei ich auch drüber nachgedenke, mir ne 10mm Stahlplatte mit Aufnahmebohrungen lasern zu lassen und da einen Hüfthalter drauf zu schweissen. Der würde sich an der Z Säule mit grossen Feingewindeschrauben, welche dann jeweils nur auf Druck belastet werden konnen, abgestützt. Versteift das Ganze sicher aber dämpft die Schwingungen aber nicht...
@@movo6690 Die Z Säule abzustüzen schadet sicher nicht, wobei ich die 10mm stahlplatte vll unten noch verrippen würde, sonst fängt die evtl zum schwingen an
Did you say that this machine is the same as an RF-45?
Basically its a rf45 clone
Optimum machines usually have pretty bad quality. Remember to oil all surfaces with exposed metal well. Our school machines tend to rust very very quickly and those are from Optimum.
Imo this is more a problem of the humidity in the shop, and not so much machine issue
bought one of these in NZ a couple of years ago. 6 speed only and morse taper 3 spindle. Ok as a drill press. Disappointing as a mill. Took it apart to investigate. Rubbish machining of the headstock and appalling assembly. I chose the Optimum as I thought it would have better quality control. Won't be fooled again !
Did it have a round collumn?
@@ChristophLehner no. square. Looks just like yours
Commenting on the machines itself. My opinion is that a machine of this design, when made in this size, is inherently flawed. Way too much top-heavy, no mechanical auto feeder, no adjustable tables, no powered Z axis! . Yes it has the power make large cuts etc, but it's not rigid enough for these, The separate electric feeder limited to the main axis adds more unbalanced weight and general awkwardness. At that price level one should be able to get rig of all these compromises and limitations that belong to the hobbyist / small shop class". It's for good reason why Deckel did the FP-1 the way they did some 70 years ago, it is still the best design in my opinion. "motor on top" milling machine should be limited in my opinion to Chinese "size 30 or 32", with a BLDC motor and ungeared head.
I agree, but at this price point it's more a glorified drill press 😂
But I am very happy with it
had these machine been made in the US in the 50's and 60's they would have been made 10x better. How is it possible that with so much advancement in space age machining technology, with incredible speed and accuracy, we are now making and designing machines with WORSE quality than before!? CNC technology was suppose to make parts faster, cheaper, and achieve better accuracy without the intensive labor. What happened? This is the price we pay for having everything made in China.
Maybe ten times better, but also ten times more costly. These less expensive machines can be made to do professional-level work (as GTWR has done) for a fraction of the cost otherwise. Instead of bemoaning the lower "quality," I celebrate the newer import economy in which I can afford to do things I would never have been able to do had production stayed domestic (where the quality, but not the cost, would have declined anyway). In any event, I almost never buy anything that I don't modify or improve after getting it home. Handing over money gives me only possession--modifying and improving makes the thing _mine_ . For me, machining is not a profession, and building and working with and _on_ machines is what I do for fun. It makes little difference to me if I'm working on a steam engine or working on the milling machine I'll use eventually to make parts for the engine. Both are rewarding, and I learn from both. Without inexpensive machine tools, it would be completely out of the question.
@@tcarney57 You miss my point, Todd. CNC technology has grown exponentially yet the design and quality of these optimum machines does not reflect that. When making parts with CNC machines, we know all too well it's fast, very accurate, and saves a lot of time and labor. Are the makers of Optimum using CNC technology? They would be foolish not to. In their eyes, all they have to do is keep making substandard machines because unsuspecting consumers will buy them anyway. God forbid Optimum would spend some of the time and labor they saved
with CNC to make their machines better. If Optimum was making cars or washing machines, they would be out of business so fast, heads would spin. My contention is that we in the US made exceptional machines but even with all the CNC technology, we end up with machines that are poorly made hence need to be improved or modified. This has now become normalized. Car enthusiasts will go to great lengths to find a vintage car to restore. Why would they go through so much trouble? I believe it's because these cars were designed by designers who knew how to design attractive cars. They had that creative spirit- unlike cars of today that look computer generated. It seems we lost this spirit with machines too.
@@tcarney57 Agree with you,Todd. It is a 'horses for courses' situation. Many home hobbyist shops wouldn't be able to afford any machinery if it weren't for these cheaper imports. With some adjustment and fettling these basic mills can be made highly accurate.
WAY too expensive for what you get
Chinese mill? Optimum is a german company and only produces in china since 2003, they have german quality management etc... ive never seen somebody complain about an optimum machine
The Optimum 'Opti-turn' lathe I have recently bought is NOT a quality machine with some porous castings, rust on internal parts, very poor quality over all, however it met my price point and does all I need to do.
I also have an Optimum mill which I like and it seems to be better 'quality', probably a different factory?
nutshell answer to the question in the video title: *NO*
Horrible music