Even if you can find a way to clamp an end mill in the drill chuck I've always been told that milling with a drill chuck is a big no-no. The reason being that the drill chuck is only designed to push straight down. The drill chuck is usually only held on by a taper so can go flying off (or develop runout) if you apply side force to it.
Not disagreeing with you, though I have seen some pretty janky set ups (not limited to ones I have done). There are a few videos on youtube where people use those aftermarket mill tables in a drill press as a makeshift mill, not that I approve of that :)
If you're doing a CNC conversion - you could maybe do as much roughing as theoretically possible with an endmill on a drill cycle. That way you'd be minimizing the side loads to mostly finish passes.
This video is the reason why a 124 kg crate was dumped by DHL outside my house yesterday. I live on the floor above ground level. My arms hate you... Apart from that, thanks for a super nice channel!
Do consider the used market in your area. I was able to find a used 1980 Bridgeport model 1 for $500 within 10 miles from my home. This price isn't typical here in Florida and it did need some cleaning and adjusting but I'm glad I found it. I've found that many retired machinists are more concerned with finding a good home for the machines they can no longer use than how much money they will get for it.
This press has worked like a charm for my projects th-cam.com/users/postUgkxajoEbapTfqWaadnqb04h6U576yxXp-FE . I didn't even secure it to my table top, mainly due to the fact that I was using a 15 lbs drill vise. It's not flimsy at all as to what others have claimed it to be. Make sure the locking nuts and levers are secured and there won't be any issues with light pressure and patience. I was able to drill through aluminum, plastic, and steel (steel took a while) with no problems at all. Yeah it took a little longer than a regular drill press, but I don't have the space OR the money for one.The instruction manual was worthless, but luckily assembling the press was intuitive. However, the manual would be good for ordering replacement parts if needed. There is a nice breakdown of the parts that are included in the kit. Before ordering, make sure it is compatible with your unit, it is clearly stated what models the press is compatible with.This was an excellent purchase for $40!!
Cheers from a yankee. Please keep us updated on this mill, and if you decide to do the upgrades to make it more rigid as you mentioned, please consider doing as detailed video there as you did here with your excellent review. Can't say how much it is appreciated that you took your time and expertise to share with the world your experiences here.
I'm lucky enough to have a step father who is in charge of procurement for the tool and die shop at a "large aviation company" building near where we live. I have gotten a Monarch 612 and a 14, 3 Bridgeports (2 clones 1 original) a shaper a CNC lathe and mill and my 2 favorite pieces by far first the Sharp surface grinder (that sells it so far short) it retailed for $85k USD I got it because it was being phased out for $12k USD, because God forbid you take the time to sell a machine through a typical 2nd hand method. This type of stuff has allowed me to teach my two 14 year old daughters how to fabricate you in case their modeling careers fall through and their dance never gets to a professional level or they don't make it as TH-cam stars. Also I'm hoping the machine oil smell will keep the boys away and the day it doesn't is the day we have a chat with the boy about his intentions as he is either "good stock" and looks past the smells and grease monkey looks or he is a fellow chip maker and I may need to either kick his ass or invite him back to the shop
I found one at a pawn shop way back and it definitely helped kick start my career making robotic components. Before that it was a drill press and angle grinder. Great learning tool as good as taking any college course. Buy one and start making stuff. I have a Bridgeport now and still have and use all my R8 tooling first bought for the mini.
Overall it looks like a really nice machine, I also like the slightly larger Sieg SX3 mill. For the last 40 years I have been using British, American, German, Taiwanese and Chinese machinery at work and at home, but I do like some of the Chinese made machines. We are fortunate that China produces affordable new machine tools as an alternative to much more expensive machinery from other countries, as long as we don't end up with a Chinese machine with too many serious manufacturing faults. The adjusting set screws at the base of the column that you mention may not be adjusters at all, I have never seen any actual adjusters fitted on similar mills before. They may just be tapered locating dowels, the Chinese do use tapered dowels extensively to locate components on a lot of their machines and these tapered dowels have an internal thread that is used for extracting them.
The Sieg mills are pretty good for quality and build. You will find a noticeable improvement in your rigidity if you bed the shimmed column joint on a metalised epoxy compound. Leave the shims in place when you bolt it back down tight after adding epoxy bedding compound.
Years ago after selling my machine shop, was still determined to not be without a mill or lathe, but had limited real-estate in the garage. I purchased a LMS Hi-Torque mini mill and use it at least twice a week for assorted projects. The hardest habit to become acquainted with on mini mills and lathes is the lacking of horsepower and 5 times as much time due to taking smaller cuts. These mills and lathes mostly made in China all require tons of modifications to achieve accuracy and personal satisfaction with end projects. Over time when you are used to the lacking and tooling differences, you will wonder how you could ever survive without one. All it takes is an imagination to come up with functional power feeds, DRO use and other home made tooling for a nice end product, within .0005" tolerance. I have found these machines need constant checking and maintenance if you use them a lot, due to the steel materials being softer, but no big deal for the cheap price comparison of a Bridgeport or Jet machine.
One of the very best reviews I have encountered. So much better than any of the manufacturer or affiliated ones I have seen for benchtop mills. Thank you very much.
I think the big advantage of R8 is that you can get collets that fit in the spindle directly, not using much z space. That will also be far more rigid. You have to tap the drawbar on all tool swaps on R8, you are incorrect thinking they will come out on their own. The shorter steeper taper doesn't wedge as tightly though, so just a single tap usually pops it out.
Well done video. I have a Jet knee mill with an R8 collet. Works fine. In addition to the greater travels you get a ram to increase the usable Y, a rotating column that can increase the area covered or allow hanging work off the side of the table and a tilting head that can go full 90° sideways for horizontal boring. There is a key in the spindle that prevents rotation of the collet. Changing collets is simple, just rotate the draw bar one turn and give it a tap, it frees the tool. The biggest limitation for travels is in the Z. Everything you add to the spindle or table takes away Z travel. A vice & drill chuck just to start. If you add a boring head, rotary table or adjustable angle plate even more is lost. For most drilling I use screw machine drill bits. Their short length makes them much stiffer and less likely to flex. I've got two Taiwan machines and one mainland China. The Taiwan machines are considerably better made.
Yea but the x2 can be had for like a 3rd the price. The category this falls into is really pitted against much larger bench top mills. Grizzly had the g0704 in its basic form for around the same price as this for awhile, though it looks like they don't offer it by itself anymore, just with the overpriced stand.
Well done, I have a 30 year old Busy Bee bench top mill, lots of people ridicule these smaller machines but the do great work within their capacity. I use MT3 collets now and it makes a huge difference in rigidity and clearance compared to the Clarke/Posi lock holder that I started with. Ausee tools has a good range. Thanks for posting.
Wow, mate!! Excellent "Meat and Potatoes" review, thanx so much. I've owned the Little Machine Shop's Sieg Mini Lathe for about 4 years now, and other than the "WIMPY" slop in the Crossslide movement, (the Allen Gib Screws that you point out) it's been a great little helper. God bless!
Nice review. I find myself comparing my purchase choices to yours. For not a lot more money (excluding accessories like the DRO) it's very possible to buy a full sized bench mill instead if you have the space for it. The working volume is considerably larger, there's more power to work with, the machine is heavier/more rigid, and overall, a full sized bench mill is surprisingly cheap for what you get even when considering purchasing a new model. The only thing you have that I don't is the fact that your head is mounted to the column on a dovetail which is a feature I would really like. My mill (a Jet) only clamps to a round column, so I can't move the head and maintain position at the same time. That's the only limitation I've run into so far.
Could you add a spindle flat on the table would be pretty cool project. Would be like 4 axis machine. With real spindle tooling. Which obv badass. And what could be the cheapest 4/5 axis machine?
Use More Coolant. Doesn't matter who you are or what you do with your milling machine, as long as there are no puddles in your workshop, this advice stands.
Nice job with the review! Here in the USA, I think Americans expectations of the inexpensive Chinese machines is far too high, especially at the low prices points they sell at. I also think "hobbyist" machinists want unrealistic fit/finish and tolerances from these inexpensive lathes. In reality, not many need to make or create parts that would go on a spacecraft. I have the small lathe that you have with all the same shortcomings. Despite them, I'm still able to use it making small parts I need and to remanufacture small parts. A lot of the TH-cam American machinists are using very old and worn big lathes, mills, etc.. If they or us hobbyist machinists were making parts to sell, we wouldn't be using this equipment, whether new inexpensive or worn out old American made. I needed a nice Milling machine and bought a Precision Matthews branded Taiwan mill. I've been extremely impressed with it so far. I bought it with a DRO mounted. The Taiwan machinery is certainly a step up in quality over the Chinese versions. As you noted, the machine costs are nothing compared to all the tooling you need, especially for the milling machine. I'd only add to not buy the cheap end mills on Ebay or Amazon. Most are junk that don't last long at all. Try and buy the best tooling you can afford as it will save you money in the long term. I'm really enjoying your channel! Keep up the good work!
It is the real China, and Taiwan prospered quickly with free capitalism, while communist China starved with one-party communism. Taiwan makes great machine tools. There are Taiwanese copies of Bridgeport mills, Hardinge lathes, etc. and they are every bit as good as their american namesakes.
No need to apologise for the length of this video, I don't think that you could do a decent review in a shorter video and this went quickly. Good and fair review Artisan! Six months of daily work use equates to heck of a lot of machine time over what average hobbyists are ever likely to achieve. If I were to get one, it would be to add to my skill set and my capabilities in steel, aluminium and plastic. I will have to put it on my wish list! Keep up the good work! Mark from Melbourne Australia
I bought a mini mill from northern tool a few years ago for gunsmithing work. You will pay 4-500 more for it, but you won't be forced to immediately rebuild and upgrade it.
The scale on the front of the table can be useful for centring your vise....and also for showing you just how short of X travel (I have the smaller SX2) you're going to be now that you've already got it all set up and indicated in!
Having very few second hand says so much for the quality of these. We have a WM 18 some issues with the motor getting hot but take the box off bore bigger holes in its base and fit an extractor fan. Yes the plastic gears are PANTS and a belt drive is half way installed/made. 5 m belt. David and Lily England.
Well, the X2 mini mill in my hobby 'shop' has only 350W, and the SQUARE column is more than stable enough, even for milling steel - sharp tooling and light cuts being necessary. I must say though that I have added a 10mm stiffener plate to the rear of column and base and a poly-vee belt drive (lighting and tachometer too. My drill chuck (I use it for quick milling too) has a drawbar. Another add-on was a self release added to the spindle top, so no tapping and hurting the bearings, just a quarter turn with a small wrench and every MT3 tool drops loose. For longer and more precise usage I change to an ER32 chuck. Concerning the bearings - they are the same as in the mini lathes and are of quite good quality. If you want you may change them to (expensive) same sized roller bearings, but this may not be necessary for a machine which is not used for business.
Actually, I think in Europe and Asia they use ISO30/NT30/30 taper for large mills. Mine weights 1400kg and uses NT40 taper. They like R8 in the US because the original Bridgeport Series 1 uses R8, but honestly R8 is really puny compared to even NT30. The NT/ISO/whatever taper has a positive drive key so there's absolutely NO chance the spindle would slip in the taper, even for a very heavy cut. Plus all the industrial machines, CNC, etc. all use those. One nice thing about my mill is if I wanted to buy a VMC in the future all I have to do is cut the knob off the NT40 tooling, and stick a pull stud on it, and it's instantly BT40 compatible. I've got some BT40 tooling too and all it takes is removing the pull stud and extending the draw bar to engage the thread. That last knob isn't that important (and CNC machines don't use them) and the drive key makes sure no slippage happens. But if you are machining, get carbide end mills and forget those cheap Chinese HSS end mills. With carbide you will get much better finish because you can run your mill at very high RPM and the finish will look great. But the problem with mini mill is that their lack of rigidity means the carbide end mill will get chipped especially when machining harder materials. I've seen a difference between machining 4140 with a 4 flute carbide end mill on a Grizzly G0704 bench top mill (I think it's a Weiss mill originally), vs using the same tooling to machine 4140 on my current mill. The tool wear on the larger mill was nonexistent whereas the end mill dulled very quickly on the G0704. If you got the space you really should buy used knee mills. They will have far better capability. Mine cost about 1200 dollars because it was very used (was made in 1981). The only problem is I have like 0.8mm of backlash on it...
That does indeed seem like the proper mill to purchase to actually get some work done. I've been warned off the smaller ones as being too flimsy to hold true to their cut. Very nice video with cogent info. Thanks!
From France : Thanks for the feedback. VERY usefull. I watched and listened to all the footage at normal speed! I'm planing to buy a mini lathe and a mini mill within the next year. Christophe. Of course I subscribed....
9:30 Handy power for a coolant pump. Or something running off a small servo motor maybe. Also get a drill n socket that fits the lock nut for moving the head. Stick it on there and pull the trigger * may pay to add a balancing weight opposite the handle. Id also dampen the resonant frequency of the table by putting some long, exposed bolts poking up through it, then form up the perimeter and pour a decent thickness concrete to onto it and fix the mill to that. Could do the samw with the legs, either filling wil sand/concrete or using them as a rigid brace for forming them up and surrounding with a pillar of concrete. Or, if you have access to heaps of batteries, making a shitload of small-medium spheres and filling the legs with those plus sand. (or attacking with an acetylene torch and melting the lead to conform perfectly with the cavity inside the legs...) Permenantly seal them then engrave a warning plaque to spot weld on informing the reader of the structure containing lead inside.
Another good video, thanks for your thoughts i bought a smaller version of this mill in the uk, an sx1 lp. Very similar feature set with a fixed column, i wanted to avoid a tilting column preferring the rigidity that the fixed column gives. I make smaller things and have a very small workshop and the sx1lp was the largest i could feasibly accommodate I was surprised how well it actually performed and how close to tolerance it could actually get. Went with an er25 collet chuck and recycled a proxxon drilling vice from my old machine, very similar to the one you were using which has been pretty good and hasnt suffered from jaw lift. I also use a small rotary table from my old machine which has been pretty useful Next thing to buy for it is a dro. I was also surprised how well adjusted the machine was straight out of the box, i was expecting to have to tram everything in and faff with the table gibs but it was fine. I check it before every use, old habits die hard, and have only needed to tweak it once or twice. and havent had to tram the column at all which is surprising. I paid about £800 in total for the machine, tooling, collet chuck and various other bits and pieces, so it has been reasonably good value. Only thing on this machine is that it has no way covers, so you have to sort something yourself, those things must be the cheapest bit on the machine so why they weren't included is a bit of a mystery. Maybe i just got a nice one, its not a Friday special like some of the stories about these machines ive read
Cheers for that. I have been watching your journey with this mill with interest as I plan on getting a small mill soon. I have been leaning more and more towards one of these as you have shown the work you are doing with it. Your wrap up of your experience is really great for me, probably the only thing holding me back at the moment is the dealer here (I'm also in Oz) has them listed as out of stock.
R8 is common in the uk. It is rigid and versatile. The drawbar is 7/16" unf but these are common and easy to find here. I chose R8 due the vast range of tooling available in metric or imperial. Great review and I like the detailed information.
@@artisanmakes there is good choice of quills here on many machines. Also many tools and arbours, such as ER32, are available in both MT3 and R8. I guess we are spoilt for choice 😁.
Looks like you got yourself an excellent machine. I have the Grizzly version of the X2 (tilt head)... they had a similar rigid column with the larger table but 25 years ago it was 3x's the cost of the smaller one. Nice idea about the extruded Al blocks... hope they're working well for you. Looks like you'll get years of use out of it.
Cheers, always interesting to know how long they have had these machines on the market for, how is it holding up after all these years? I think I have seen some rigid column upgrades for the x2 that I probably would have done in the event that I bought the x2. The aluminum table inserts work really well and I recommend it, so much easier to clean up and vacuum chips.
I don't know about the US market since I'm in the UK, but my mini mill was sold to me by a UK based company and it has the R8 spindle taper. Of course the first 'tools' I bought were the ER32 collet chuck and a full set of collets. Fortunately I was able to raid my bolt, nut, etc drawer to supply a suitable drawbar as the supplied one for the Jacobs chuck didn't fit. Then it was on to the end mills. To date there aren't many, and none of them exceed ~10mm in diameter. Being financially _embarrassed_ at the moment, larger diameters, facing mills and facing fly cutters will have to wait. My first project is to manufacture a few T nuts and hold down components to supplement the small milling vice I got off the Bay of e. Wish mine came with the quill and DRO, but the price at the time was too tempting to leave it even though it has the tilting column. My pet peeve with that, is that the scale on the column is on the opposite side to the handles, making it difficult to read while in operation. That alone is a good reason to fit a DRO!
I used a tormach PCNC mill a bunch with an R8 collet chuck and I still had to whack it with a hammer to pop out the tools. The tormach TTS system uses an R8 collet to grab the tool holder which is straight instead of tapered so I have also had problems with tools pulling out in heavy loading cases like running half inch endmills aggressively. Morse taper would have been way nicer. That CNC mill is at a makerspace, if I ever need my own machine I'd consider one of these Sieg mills tho. Thanks for the video!
Just a heads up. That ISO 68 hydraulic fluid is different to ISO 68 way oil. The ISO 68 just dictates the viscosity of the oil. Way oil will be stickier and holds itself to the ways/lead screws and prevent wear. There's an eBay seller from Aus that sells small bottles of mobil and generic way oil.
Cheers, it's close enough for what I need, my understanding is that way oil is a type of hydraulic oil anyway. Plus it helped that I had the bottle on hand before. I've seen it used as a substitute before without issue but I'll have to check out eBay since I the local reseller only sells way oil in 10l bottles.
The manual for my mill requests a type of hydraulic oil for the slides too. It has a central oil pump though, so the slides get oiled every time you turn it on. For a machine without a central oil pump, like the mini lathe, i find iso 220 way oil feels better, with practically no stick-slip.
I don't oil my lead screws. They came greased from the factory and oiling them would only wash away the grease. I may grease them periodically, but the manufacturer didn't intend for it to be accessible for lubrication. The thrust bearings for the axis', however do come with oil caps. I use way oil on those as well as the dovetails.
Ever heard the expression "call central casting...."? The reason why these milling machines can be sold so cheaply is that the castings that go into them are made en masse at a central foundry then supplied to individual manufacturing companies for final finishing, each one adding their own custom detail (e.g. handwheel style, motor type, etc) to slightly distinguish their one from a competitor selling the otherwise identical same machine. Likewise, the publicity photos of a sample fully finished machine are also supplied by 'central casting' hence the reason why the way cover on yours is 'missing' (actually not, never intended to begin with).
I can’t comment on these machines specifically, but it’s not too different from the production of a motor casting I worked on a while back. And from what I can see from other examples of this machine, some come with front way covers others don’t. Not sure if it is luck if the draw or production date based
Nice home mills... my fav home brew coolant is 70% alcohol (isopropyl) mix with light oil (3 part alcohol and 1 part oil). For plastic, I only use alcohol.
I have a Sieg mini milling machine (SX2LF) and I honestly recommend that, unless you want trouble, don't buy a Sieg. The drill chuck head is too slack and wobbles (try spining the Chuck on the machine at low speed and watch how it wobbles), not to mention there is a persistent machine vibration, suggesting that something is unbalanced. There is no electrical wiring diagram on which wires go where. And the DRO scale attachment are a pain in the neck to install, as the scales come in one length and you have to cut the glass scales to size, plus, plus, plus... and the rest. And, depending on where you purchased/ordered the machine from, the sellers are hard to trust. They tell you one thing and it's not even correct, lies! Buyers beware!
Sorry to hear about your experience. I of course have no experience with the X2lf but that does not seem like a well put together machine. I hope that you got it fixed or your money back. Cheers
@@artisanmakes Money back? Of course, no. All thanks to COVID that played the sickening part and the seller wouldn't refund it. But then, when I used it for the first time testing it, OMG! I found a lot of poorly produced components, the chuck couldn't hold 1 mm drill bit among other thing, including the chuck claws being too lose and so on. But the problem that COVID caused was that there was a shortage of power feeder for this mill. It took two years for new shipment to arrive. Yesterday I fitter the power feeder on the table. Still have to test it yet. But, It's the quality of Sieg that I don't like.
What if you were to partially submerge the rear side of the column in epoxy granite. Obviously do some surface treatment to the column to promote adhesion. And maybe just partially submerge the very bottom of the base into reinforced concrete or more epoxy granite. You could have J bolts set in the concrete to mount the base and maybe even more J bolts alongside the base to use toe clamps to hold the flange of the base down to promote rigidity. Epoxy granite and concrete both have very good vibration dampening properties as well as rigidity and heft.
Get yourself some sutton carbide endmills, especially one of the E543 types for finishing in steel, the surface finish will blow your mind compared to how HSS behaves in these smaller machines
Something I've occasionally wondered, watching your videos about improving your mini lathe and mill, that this one brought to the fore, is... Well, first of all, I don't really know the market, so are there lathes and mills of comparable size (i.e., not jumping out of the "mini" hobbyist scale of machine) that are of noticeably better stock build quality (and thus not requiring a series of projects up front to correct all the little discount shortcuts that you've found in yours; thus also probably more expensive)? If there are, has any kind of analysis ever been done on the cost of "buy a more expensive machine of better stock quality" vs. "buy a cheaper model and do however many projects (and possibly subprojects for tooling creation) it takes to bring it to equivalent quality to the more expensive model" ? ("Cost" meaning materials, consumables, and at least a notional idea of whatever monetary value you might assign to your labor if you were doing the work to get paid.) I just think it'd be interesting to know whether the Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice applies here. That is, if you can afford the cost of one machine vs. the other up front, is it more economical to buy the cheap machine as a fixer-upper, or just start out with the more expensive machine that doesn't require all that effort? (I suppose there's possibly a secondary consideration to be had, regarding getting the cheap one anyway if you need a bunch of projects to learn machining skills with.)
I am by no means an expert on the range of hobby mills, but I am not aware of many manufacturer that makes really high quality mills for around the same price. Precision Matthews is a brand that springs to mind (Quinn at Blondihacks has one) that seems to have comparable mills. They are Taiwanese made, have a similar design to this and seem to have better quality control and after sales support. Same goes for the brand optimum, they make mini mills that I have seen for sale at my local machinery house, however they seem to cost a lot more for less value, but on the flip side, have local customer support. Of course there are the Sherline and Taig and Proxxon Mills which seem to be high quality but are much smaller. Overall unless there is a big used market, smaller mills seem to have a fairly narrow range of options. As for the time spent upgrading , ultimately it is always up to you and how far you want to take it. This is a hobby for me and I get the most enjoyment out of fixing up these low end machines. Cheers
@@artisanmakes Oh, sure. I wasn't expecting "high quality mills for around the same price". What I meant was, like, (all price numbers made up for illustrative purposes) "hm... for this size/approx. feature set, an Ooh La La brand high-quality mill costs $1,200, and an El Cheapo low-end mill costs $900 but will require $200 in tooling, another $200 in materials, and an unknown amount of time making parts and making tools to make parts and etc. to bring the El Cheapo up to the quality level that the Ooh La La comes out of the box with," etc. But yes, admittedly there is also something to be said for buying a machine you know will be a fixer-upper just for the fun/educational experience of doing those projects.
Thank you for a fantastic walk-thru of this mill. I have an HBM BF25L Vario mill and it is quite similar to yours. I have been having issues with vibrations or some sort of incapability of milling properly. Maybe it is due to that I haven't tightened the mill properly to a solid base. I have yet to make a fly cutter in the lathe but that will be next. The end mill I have is probably of low quality and thus giving poor results. Thank you for a very inspiring video and also the other ones regarding your lathes. You have a new subscriber now 🙂
I have just bought the SX2.7L. I measured the Y-axis travel and only get 170mm (with the rear bellow removed), spec says 190mm? What is your travel? I also made a couple of improvements: I added 2 very thin magnets to the spindle spanner, now it stays in place while I change tools (and hangs on the front face when not used) I added 2 paint marks to the outside of the spindle where the spindle spanner holes are, much easier to find and insert the spanner now Still waiting on some tools to really get into it
13:30 actually great thing that you said that ^^ i just now bought a mill, because i couldnt get the taper out of my old drill press, well party, and also, mill super useful lol, anyway long story short, altho i was not able to remove the chuck, simply plugging in a milling bit and trying to mill, and its out, easy as that.
It’s not that the chuck jaws are hardened that’s the problem. That’s a common misconception. It’s that a drill chuck, being made for drilling, not milling, grips the tool with just three lines of compression, whereas a mill holder, whether a collet of solid holder, grips the bit all around, with the solid holder securing it with a Weldon flat and screw. It literally has hundreds of times more gripping area. And high quality collets can be as hard as the part being gripped.
Nice video and very informative. Looks like a nice small mill to play around with in the shed. Thanks for the time and effort you put into your videos. Cheers Dave..
Thank you very much for this . absolutely useful in so many ways. My wish is that (seemingly) no manufacturer produces a drill press with built in Quill lock. My requirements are no so much metal machining, but true calibration in X,Y,Z axis`s for wood . Consequently I now find I have to search in the milling field for my requirments. Again, thank you.
Embrace your new hobby. I've been using machinist techniques for years on dead tree carcasses and I find that I probably arrive at solution much more quickly than most wood workers. Need an exact width dado? Set up your dado set to near the width you need and then make a test cut. Check the width of the test cut with calipers and then add or subtract shims as needed. I've yet to do more than one test cut to get exactly what I want. No more swapping shims, testing, swapping shims, testing, etc. One test cut. One adjustment. Done.
Thought i would share my experience with mini-mills v/s an actual Bridgeport. Unless you’re doing very light duty work on very small parts, suck it up and get a real Bridgeport (if you have the room) they made a small table version. After doing all the upgrades available for my mini mill to make it half way usable, i would have spent the same as i did eventually on a used Bridgeport. These mini mills just do not have the torque to drill or mill anything with any authority besides small alum/brass parts. I had an R8 spindle mini mill and it just couldnt do what i needed.. (hot rod chassis and related work) Good used Bridgeports are still out there, yes youll need a phase converter but i was so much happier with a real machine.. learn from my mistake!!
I will say, the harbor freight mill I just axlcquired uses an R8 collet instead of a morse taper. So you don't lose space getting a chuck that needs collects.
I bought a Grizzly Mill G0704 and Lathe G0752. Are they perfect? Not really. Can they make better parts than they should? That is up to the operator. I make perfect parts with my less than perfect machines. Why? Because I use dial indicators and calipers alot. I also upgraded my lathe compound and tool post which was a massive improvement and made a huge finish difference. I use collets for milling. The drill chuck is only for drilling, though I have used it for some quick milling that didnt need a perfect finish. Shars Tools is a great place for top notch items.
I am pleased to see how you treat your machines and how accurate your work is. I have a newbie question - how much space above mill do need to operate it ? (I have limited vertical space)
As a newbie am thinking seriously of getting a bench mill. I found your run down excellent with an affordable unit, it sounds great. Any further vids for updates? Adelaide boy here. .
How do you make fine adjustments on the head ? Seems to be very difficult without macro adjustment. The macro adjustment on the quill is not very good. It's loose and it's not even accurate. I get almost 0.5mm error on a 50mm travel of the quill. I ended up mounting 3rd axis dro to the spindle housing underneath and it was way more accurate. But still, entire spindle assembly is not very rigid to use macro adjustment on it. Need to come up with a micro adjustment for the had and that way I can attach z axis sensor to the head. It will be more accurate this way. Attaching it to the spindle housing introduces flex play of around 0.04mm if am not mistaken. I want 0 but oh well.
It is not easy. I have the gibs done up very tight on the head to minimise slop. To measure the adjustment I will use an indicator to see how far the head drops or quill if I'm using the quill. And to be fair to this machine I used this method with a larger mill a few years ago when I needed precise measurements.
Great video. In a 16’x10’ building tools fight for space so if I get one be like that. First of year maybe November or December if ole lady nice to me. Lol. Let me get early. Love video’s. Keep up good job. From ur ole hillbilly buddy stay safe.
G’day. Nice video - again. What else have you done with the mill & lathe except made parts for the…mill & lathe. lol. Joking, your parts are always great to see. Also, much cheaper to buy a mill with cheapest motor and then replace the motor with a more powerful brushless. They’re cheap as chips! [The USB ports: one is for charging your phone and USB port 2 is for loading your CAM files. 😉 ] Hey, I got a “temporary pleated black blind” from Spotlight. About 6ft x 6ft for $15. GR8 way cover! Just cut what you need. 👌 A quick question: what is involved in increasing the Y axis movement? Is it doable? (within reason as everything is ‘doable’) Michael, Albury NSW
Hehe i do make other stuff in the workshop but I tend not to film it because I don't think its too interesting. Love the pleated blind idea, definitely a DIY approach
Not too sure about a practical way of increasing the y travel. You'd probably have to modify the lead screw and the lead nut to allow the table to move further forward. Not sure how practical it would be
What I found is the spindle bearings are loose causing chatter and lack of accuracy. And there’s too much backlash in the table screws. You have to be real careful climb milling. Maybe I’m just spoiled from using Bridgeport mills. It’s basically a glorified drill press.
bought one new and the z column was knife thin at the top where the dovetails met the metal. I returned it but the store was hesitant and gave me troubles. Got a second one, same thing but at the bottom of the column where the bolts hold it. A bridgeport style mill is the best choice when possible...
Sorry to hear about that, not a problem with mine bit that is a risk with these mills. I'd always love to get a knee mill but they aren't common here and I'm not sure about the price the would command. Plus I'm not even sure it would be possible to put it in my workshop. Cheers
Very informative channel so much so i bought the SIEG SX2.7L , would i be correct in my measurements for the linear scales X=700 Y=500 Z=400 any advice greatly appreciated, keep up the good work.
You probably dont need that much for the x and y. Whatever the table movement it. I think you could safely go 500 or 600 for the x and 350 or 400 for y. Just make sure that is correct, it has been a while since I bough mine. I got the 700mm X linear rails and they almost didnt fit on the table
If ever there was an ideal way to hold anything in a spindle it has to be the R8 system.......for twice the usability you can mount a tool shank or insert a collet to hold the cutter directly in the spindle thus saving a lot on Z height and gaining lots of rigidity..........second to that is the MT3, but you can have tool seizure problems with the Morse taper due to it's slow taper.
I agree with you there. If R8 was more common in Aus. I might have gone with that. Its mostly MT3 and NT40 tapers that ive seen on machinery here. Cheers
@@artisanmakes I have ISO40 on my big mill..........going to R8 shouldn't be a problem as all your tooling comes from China via EBAY anyway. One big advantage with R8 is that you can mount a 20mm collet and use 20mm plain shanks for quick change (and economy) like the TTS method. The other very popular shank is the ISO30, but having a shank and a chuck on the end does lose some Z height whereas R8 direct in the spindle doesn't have that problem.
Good day Sir, appreciate and enjoyed your video. I cannot say I've ever had an R8 taper tool just fall out after loosening the drawbar...however, that is only experience from 2 or 3 different Bridgeport clones, not a Chinese hobby machine although, if the taper is correctly made, should be no difference. I mention this as added info for someone
I would love to have one like that but I got the 3 in 1 lathe mill drill combo from HF Central machinery 4414something. It's just like the grizzly g9729 and let me tell you it's a great and very capable machine I got it 3 years ago for 2000 bucks so I'm I use it more than the X2 or the mini lathe
I bought a small milling machine with a fixed colem similar to yours but mine is close in size to the x2 milling machine . Love the full information video 👍.
Awesome, glad to hear it. I saw some X2 mills with a solid column too, but with bigger table and the sale at the time I ultimately chose to go with he 2.7. How is the solid column on the x2, do you think its rigid enough?
@@motari6249 Interesting, when I was lookign at the sieg range, they have a huge range of different x2 mills, looks like you got one of the better ones, cheers.
Even if you can find a way to clamp an end mill in the drill chuck I've always been told that milling with a drill chuck is a big no-no. The reason being that the drill chuck is only designed to push straight down. The drill chuck is usually only held on by a taper so can go flying off (or develop runout) if you apply side force to it.
Not disagreeing with you, though I have seen some pretty janky set ups (not limited to ones I have done). There are a few videos on youtube where people use those aftermarket mill tables in a drill press as a makeshift mill, not that I approve of that :)
@@artisanmakes oh yeah it certainly can be done. You just run the risk of hurting yourself, or even worse your mill ;)
Also the bearings in the drillpress are not made for substantial side force. You will quickly destroy them when abusing the drill for milling.
If you're doing a CNC conversion - you could maybe do as much roughing as theoretically possible with an endmill on a drill cycle. That way you'd be minimizing the side loads to mostly finish passes.
@@nate6692 Drilling with a drill is way more efficient than an end mill
A bit of a long one today, been in the making for a while. I hope you find this video useful and enjoy it. Cheers
Good overview. Sieg should be giving you a discount on the next purchase 😜
Good job on the review!
You are a professional content creator ;)
Antonmursid🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🇲🇨
Antonmursid🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🇲🇨
Longer is better, as long as you don't rumble about hothing but provide information.
This video is the reason why a 124 kg crate was dumped by DHL outside my house yesterday. I live on the floor above ground level. My arms hate you...
Apart from that, thanks for a super nice channel!
Do consider the used market in your area. I was able to find a used 1980 Bridgeport model 1 for $500 within 10 miles from my home. This price isn't typical here in Florida and it did need some cleaning and adjusting but I'm glad I found it. I've found that many retired machinists are more concerned with finding a good home for the machines they can no longer use than how much money they will get for it.
Good to know, thanks. Is it kind the same for lathes? Haven’t seen a whole lot on the used market
@@RC-fp1tl It depends on your area. You just have to keep looking.
This press has worked like a charm for my projects th-cam.com/users/postUgkxajoEbapTfqWaadnqb04h6U576yxXp-FE . I didn't even secure it to my table top, mainly due to the fact that I was using a 15 lbs drill vise. It's not flimsy at all as to what others have claimed it to be. Make sure the locking nuts and levers are secured and there won't be any issues with light pressure and patience. I was able to drill through aluminum, plastic, and steel (steel took a while) with no problems at all. Yeah it took a little longer than a regular drill press, but I don't have the space OR the money for one.The instruction manual was worthless, but luckily assembling the press was intuitive. However, the manual would be good for ordering replacement parts if needed. There is a nice breakdown of the parts that are included in the kit. Before ordering, make sure it is compatible with your unit, it is clearly stated what models the press is compatible with.This was an excellent purchase for $40!!
Cheers from a yankee. Please keep us updated on this mill, and if you decide to do the upgrades to make it more rigid as you mentioned, please consider doing as detailed video there as you did here with your excellent review. Can't say how much it is appreciated that you took your time and expertise to share with the world your experiences here.
No worries, I'm glad you enjoyed the video and I'll be sure to show everything here on the channel. Cheers.
This is by far the best review of the Sieg x2.7L mill that is on TH-cam. Thank you for putting in the time to make it. Well done!
Glad it was helpful, cheers.
Antonmursid🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🇲🇨
I'm lucky enough to have a step father who is in charge of procurement for the tool and die shop at a "large aviation company" building near where we live. I have gotten a Monarch 612 and a 14, 3 Bridgeports (2 clones 1 original) a shaper a CNC lathe and mill and my 2 favorite pieces by far first the Sharp surface grinder (that sells it so far short) it retailed for $85k USD I got it because it was being phased out for $12k USD, because God forbid you take the time to sell a machine through a typical 2nd hand method. This type of stuff has allowed me to teach my two 14 year old daughters how to fabricate you in case their modeling careers fall through and their dance never gets to a professional level or they don't make it as TH-cam stars. Also I'm hoping the machine oil smell will keep the boys away and the day it doesn't is the day we have a chat with the boy about his intentions as he is either "good stock" and looks past the smells and grease monkey looks or he is a fellow chip maker and I may need to either kick his ass or invite him back to the shop
I found one at a pawn shop way back and it definitely helped kick start my career making robotic components. Before that it was a drill press and angle grinder. Great learning tool as good as taking any college course. Buy one and start making stuff. I have a Bridgeport now and still have and use all my R8 tooling first bought for the mini.
Overall it looks like a really nice machine, I also like the slightly larger Sieg SX3 mill. For the last 40 years I have been using British, American, German, Taiwanese and Chinese machinery at work and at home, but I do like some of the Chinese made machines. We are fortunate that China produces affordable new machine tools as an alternative to much more expensive machinery from other countries, as long as we don't end up with a Chinese machine with too many serious manufacturing faults.
The adjusting set screws at the base of the column that you mention may not be adjusters at all, I have never seen any actual adjusters fitted on similar mills before. They may just be tapered locating dowels, the Chinese do use tapered dowels extensively to locate components on a lot of their machines and these tapered dowels have an internal thread that is used for extracting them.
The Sieg mills are pretty good for quality and build. You will find a noticeable improvement in your rigidity if you bed the shimmed column joint on a metalised epoxy compound. Leave the shims in place when you bolt it back down tight after adding epoxy bedding compound.
Years ago after selling my machine shop, was still determined to not be without a mill or lathe, but had limited real-estate in the garage. I purchased a LMS Hi-Torque mini mill and use it at least twice a week for assorted projects. The hardest habit to become acquainted with on mini mills and lathes is the lacking of horsepower and 5 times as much time due to taking smaller cuts. These mills and lathes mostly made in China all require tons of modifications to achieve accuracy and personal satisfaction with end projects. Over time when you are used to the lacking and tooling differences, you will wonder how you could ever survive without one. All it takes is an imagination to come up with functional power feeds, DRO use and other home made tooling for a nice end product, within .0005" tolerance. I have found these machines need constant checking and maintenance if you use them a lot, due to the steel materials being softer, but no big deal for the cheap price comparison of a Bridgeport or Jet machine.
One of the very best reviews I have encountered. So much better than any of the manufacturer or affiliated ones I have seen for benchtop mills. Thank you very much.
I think the big advantage of R8 is that you can get collets that fit in the spindle directly, not using much z space. That will also be far more rigid.
You have to tap the drawbar on all tool swaps on R8, you are incorrect thinking they will come out on their own. The shorter steeper taper doesn't wedge as tightly though, so just a single tap usually pops it out.
Good point about having to tap it out too. All friction fit holding methods require the same. 👍
its not an exclusively R8 thing, they are also available in mt3.
Well done video. I have a Jet knee mill with an R8 collet. Works fine. In addition to the greater travels you get a ram to increase the usable Y, a rotating column that can increase the area covered or allow hanging work off the side of the table and a tilting head that can go full 90° sideways for horizontal boring. There is a key in the spindle that prevents rotation of the collet. Changing collets is simple, just rotate the draw bar one turn and give it a tap, it frees the tool.
The biggest limitation for travels is in the Z. Everything you add to the spindle or table takes away Z travel. A vice & drill chuck just to start. If you add a boring head, rotary table or adjustable angle plate even more is lost. For most drilling I use screw machine drill bits. Their short length makes them much stiffer and less likely to flex. I've got two Taiwan machines and one mainland China. The Taiwan machines are considerably better made.
Probably one of the best reviews out there!
Thanks for sharing,
Cheers
I had the x2. found it to small, under powered and not ridged enough. looks like your mill is a huge step up from the x2. great video
Yea but the x2 can be had for like a 3rd the price. The category this falls into is really pitted against much larger bench top mills. Grizzly had the g0704 in its basic form for around the same price as this for awhile, though it looks like they don't offer it by itself anymore, just with the overpriced stand.
Well done, I have a 30 year old Busy Bee bench top mill, lots of people ridicule these smaller machines but the do great work within their capacity. I use MT3 collets now and it makes a huge difference in rigidity and clearance compared to the Clarke/Posi lock holder that I started with. Ausee tools has a good range. Thanks for posting.
Thankyou for your comment, I have ordered some MT3 collets for a quick change tooling system and i'm glad to know that they are more rigid. Cheers
@@artisanmakes Be nice to see a video doing a comparison with ER32?
Wow, mate!! Excellent "Meat and Potatoes" review, thanx so much. I've owned the Little Machine Shop's Sieg Mini Lathe for about 4 years now, and other than the "WIMPY" slop in the Crossslide movement, (the Allen Gib Screws that you point out) it's been a great little helper. God bless!
Nice review. I find myself comparing my purchase choices to yours. For not a lot more money (excluding accessories like the DRO) it's very possible to buy a full sized bench mill instead if you have the space for it. The working volume is considerably larger, there's more power to work with, the machine is heavier/more rigid, and overall, a full sized bench mill is surprisingly cheap for what you get even when considering purchasing a new model. The only thing you have that I don't is the fact that your head is mounted to the column on a dovetail which is a feature I would really like. My mill (a Jet) only clamps to a round column, so I can't move the head and maintain position at the same time. That's the only limitation I've run into so far.
Where do you recommend shopping for one in Australia. And a basic lathe?
Could you add a spindle flat on the table would be pretty cool project. Would be like 4 axis machine. With real spindle tooling. Which obv badass. And what could be the cheapest 4/5 axis machine?
Use More Coolant.
Doesn't matter who you are or what you do with your milling machine,
as long as there are no puddles in your workshop, this advice stands.
Nice job with the review! Here in the USA, I think Americans expectations of the inexpensive Chinese machines is far too high, especially at the low prices points they sell at. I also think "hobbyist" machinists want unrealistic fit/finish and tolerances from these inexpensive lathes. In reality, not many need to make or create parts that would go on a spacecraft. I have the small lathe that you have with all the same shortcomings. Despite them, I'm still able to use it making small parts I need and to remanufacture small parts.
A lot of the TH-cam American machinists are using very old and worn big lathes, mills, etc.. If they or us hobbyist machinists were making parts to sell, we wouldn't be using this equipment, whether new inexpensive or worn out old American made.
I needed a nice Milling machine and bought a Precision Matthews branded Taiwan mill. I've been extremely impressed with it so far. I bought it with a DRO mounted. The Taiwan machinery is certainly a step up in quality over the Chinese versions.
As you noted, the machine costs are nothing compared to all the tooling you need, especially for the milling machine. I'd only add to not buy the cheap end mills on Ebay or Amazon. Most are junk that don't last long at all. Try and buy the best tooling you can afford as it will save you money in the long term.
I'm really enjoying your channel! Keep up the good work!
Taiwan is the real china.
The precision of the machine is achieved by adjusting the machine. th-cam.com/video/4w-OHSqLpHo/w-d-xo.html
Which model did you get?
@@DavZell PM-25MV is what I purchased. It's been great so far.
It is the real China, and Taiwan prospered quickly with free capitalism, while communist China starved with one-party communism.
Taiwan makes great machine tools. There are Taiwanese copies of Bridgeport mills, Hardinge lathes, etc. and they are every bit as good as their american namesakes.
No need to apologise for the length of this video, I don't think that you could do a decent review in a shorter video and this went quickly.
Good and fair review Artisan! Six months of daily work use equates to heck of a lot of machine time over what average hobbyists are ever likely to achieve.
If I were to get one, it would be to add to my skill set and my capabilities in steel, aluminium and plastic. I will have to put it on my wish list!
Keep up the good work!
Mark from Melbourne Australia
@@davidwillard7334 Idiot Shouting Troll!
Wow this has to be the most in-depth review I've seen in a long time. Damn great job!👍👍👍👍👍
You make my day today! I’m at home super sick, close to a non-Workshop depression. So, your video comes in just right ✌️☺️
I bought a mini mill from northern tool a few years ago for gunsmithing work. You will pay 4-500 more for it, but you won't be forced to immediately rebuild and upgrade it.
The scale on the front of the table can be useful for centring your vise....and also for showing you just how short of X travel (I have the smaller SX2) you're going to be now that you've already got it all set up and indicated in!
Having very few second hand says so much for the quality of these.
We have a WM 18 some issues with the motor getting hot but take the box off bore bigger holes in its base and fit an extractor fan. Yes the plastic gears are PANTS and a belt drive is half way installed/made. 5 m belt.
David and Lily England.
Well, the X2 mini mill in my hobby 'shop' has only 350W, and the SQUARE column is more than stable enough, even for milling steel - sharp tooling and light cuts being necessary. I must say though that I have added a 10mm stiffener plate to the rear of column and base and a poly-vee belt drive (lighting and tachometer too. My drill chuck (I use it for quick milling too) has a drawbar. Another add-on was a self release added to the spindle top, so no tapping and hurting the bearings, just a quarter turn with a small wrench and every MT3 tool drops loose. For longer and more precise usage I change to an ER32 chuck. Concerning the bearings - they are the same as in the mini lathes and are of quite good quality. If you want you may change them to (expensive) same sized roller bearings, but this may not be necessary for a machine which is not used for business.
Actually, I think in Europe and Asia they use ISO30/NT30/30 taper for large mills. Mine weights 1400kg and uses NT40 taper. They like R8 in the US because the original Bridgeport Series 1 uses R8, but honestly R8 is really puny compared to even NT30. The NT/ISO/whatever taper has a positive drive key so there's absolutely NO chance the spindle would slip in the taper, even for a very heavy cut. Plus all the industrial machines, CNC, etc. all use those. One nice thing about my mill is if I wanted to buy a VMC in the future all I have to do is cut the knob off the NT40 tooling, and stick a pull stud on it, and it's instantly BT40 compatible. I've got some BT40 tooling too and all it takes is removing the pull stud and extending the draw bar to engage the thread. That last knob isn't that important (and CNC machines don't use them) and the drive key makes sure no slippage happens.
But if you are machining, get carbide end mills and forget those cheap Chinese HSS end mills. With carbide you will get much better finish because you can run your mill at very high RPM and the finish will look great. But the problem with mini mill is that their lack of rigidity means the carbide end mill will get chipped especially when machining harder materials. I've seen a difference between machining 4140 with a 4 flute carbide end mill on a Grizzly G0704 bench top mill (I think it's a Weiss mill originally), vs using the same tooling to machine 4140 on my current mill. The tool wear on the larger mill was nonexistent whereas the end mill dulled very quickly on the G0704.
If you got the space you really should buy used knee mills. They will have far better capability. Mine cost about 1200 dollars because it was very used (was made in 1981). The only problem is I have like 0.8mm of backlash on it...
What a wonderful review. Very concise and easy to follow details for any beginner enthusiast, and probably for more experienced users.
This and your 2 year lathe review are really fantastic, subd, thanks for sharing
That does indeed seem like the proper mill to purchase to actually get some work done. I've been warned off the smaller ones as being too flimsy to hold true to their cut. Very nice video with cogent info. Thanks!
Nice video, I debated endlessly between the Sieg X2.7L and a used Enco RF-30 for same price, ended up going with the RF-30.
From France : Thanks for the feedback. VERY usefull. I watched and listened to all the footage at normal speed! I'm planing to buy a mini lathe and a mini mill within the next year. Christophe. Of course I subscribed....
Which mill did you get and where in France?
@@EngineeringNibbles nothing yet... workshop not ready. It will take 2 more years
9:30
Handy power for a coolant pump.
Or something running off a small servo motor maybe.
Also get a drill n socket that fits the lock nut for moving the head. Stick it on there and pull the trigger
* may pay to add a balancing weight opposite the handle. Id also dampen the resonant frequency of the table by putting some long, exposed bolts poking up through it, then form up the perimeter and pour a decent thickness concrete to onto it and fix the mill to that. Could do the samw with the legs, either filling wil sand/concrete or using them as a rigid brace for forming them up and surrounding with a pillar of concrete.
Or, if you have access to heaps of batteries, making a shitload of small-medium spheres and filling the legs with those plus sand. (or attacking with an acetylene torch and melting the lead to conform perfectly with the cavity inside the legs...) Permenantly seal them then engrave a warning plaque to spot weld on informing the reader of the structure containing lead inside.
Another good video, thanks for your thoughts
i bought a smaller version of this mill in the uk, an sx1 lp.
Very similar feature set with a fixed column, i wanted to avoid a tilting column preferring the rigidity that the fixed column gives.
I make smaller things and have a very small workshop and the sx1lp was the largest i could feasibly accommodate
I was surprised how well it actually performed and how close to tolerance it could actually get. Went with an er25 collet chuck and recycled a proxxon drilling vice from my old machine, very similar to the one you were using which has been pretty good and hasnt suffered from jaw lift. I also use a small rotary table from my old machine which has been pretty useful
Next thing to buy for it is a dro.
I was also surprised how well adjusted the machine was straight out of the box, i was expecting to have to tram everything in and faff with the table gibs but it was fine. I check it before every use, old habits die hard, and have only needed to tweak it once or twice. and havent had to tram the column at all which is surprising.
I paid about £800 in total for the machine, tooling, collet chuck and various other bits and pieces, so it has been reasonably good value. Only thing on this machine is that it has no way covers, so you have to sort something yourself, those things must be the cheapest bit on the machine so why they weren't included is a bit of a mystery.
Maybe i just got a nice one, its not a Friday special like some of the stories about these machines ive read
Cheers for that. I have been watching your journey with this mill with interest as I plan on getting a small mill soon. I have been leaning more and more towards one of these as you have shown the work you are doing with it. Your wrap up of your experience is really great for me, probably the only thing holding me back at the moment is the dealer here (I'm also in Oz) has them listed as out of stock.
@@davidwillard7334 Stop Shouting Idiot!
Any machine is better than no machine 🙃
R8 is common in the uk. It is rigid and versatile. The drawbar is 7/16" unf but these are common and easy to find here. I chose R8 due the vast range of tooling available in metric or imperial.
Great review and I like the detailed information.
Having followed a few UK machinists lit seems that there is a good mix of MT3 and R8 machines, certainly more R8 machines than I initially thought
@@artisanmakes there is good choice of quills here on many machines. Also many tools and arbours, such as ER32, are available in both MT3 and R8.
I guess we are spoilt for choice 😁.
This was helpful to watch. Thanks for taking the time and effort to make and post this video.
This was exceptionally helpful. I recently got a milling machine and completely blanked on the collet chuck. Nice one, thanks!
Looks like you got yourself an excellent machine. I have the Grizzly version of the X2 (tilt head)... they had a similar rigid column with the larger table but 25 years ago it was 3x's the cost of the smaller one. Nice idea about the extruded Al blocks... hope they're working well for you. Looks like you'll get years of use out of it.
Cheers, always interesting to know how long they have had these machines on the market for, how is it holding up after all these years? I think I have seen some rigid column upgrades for the x2 that I probably would have done in the event that I bought the x2. The aluminum table inserts work really well and I recommend it, so much easier to clean up and vacuum chips.
I don't know about the US market since I'm in the UK, but my mini mill was sold to me by a UK based company and it has the R8 spindle taper. Of course the first 'tools' I bought were the ER32 collet chuck and a full set of collets. Fortunately I was able to raid my bolt, nut, etc drawer to supply a suitable drawbar as the supplied one for the Jacobs chuck didn't fit. Then it was on to the end mills. To date there aren't many, and none of them exceed ~10mm in diameter. Being financially _embarrassed_ at the moment, larger diameters, facing mills and facing fly cutters will have to wait. My first project is to manufacture a few T nuts and hold down components to supplement the small milling vice I got off the Bay of e. Wish mine came with the quill and DRO, but the price at the time was too tempting to leave it even though it has the tilting column. My pet peeve with that, is that the scale on the column is on the opposite side to the handles, making it difficult to read while in operation. That alone is a good reason to fit a DRO!
Well done. A good, useful and wonderful field.
I used a tormach PCNC mill a bunch with an R8 collet chuck and I still had to whack it with a hammer to pop out the tools. The tormach TTS system uses an R8 collet to grab the tool holder which is straight instead of tapered so I have also had problems with tools pulling out in heavy loading cases like running half inch endmills aggressively. Morse taper would have been way nicer. That CNC mill is at a makerspace, if I ever need my own machine I'd consider one of these Sieg mills tho. Thanks for the video!
excellent run down on this mill, thank you for your effort in putting this together
Just a heads up. That ISO 68 hydraulic fluid is different to ISO 68 way oil. The ISO 68 just dictates the viscosity of the oil. Way oil will be stickier and holds itself to the ways/lead screws and prevent wear.
There's an eBay seller from Aus that sells small bottles of mobil and generic way oil.
Cheers, it's close enough for what I need, my understanding is that way oil is a type of hydraulic oil anyway. Plus it helped that I had the bottle on hand before. I've seen it used as a substitute before without issue but I'll have to check out eBay since I the local reseller only sells way oil in 10l bottles.
The manual for my mill requests a type of hydraulic oil for the slides too. It has a central oil pump though, so the slides get oiled every time you turn it on.
For a machine without a central oil pump, like the mini lathe, i find iso 220 way oil feels better, with practically no stick-slip.
@@artisanmakes I use chainsaw bar oil on my Sieg SX3L, sticky & around the same viscosity.
@@petermurphy3354 I have heard of that alternative being thrown around before. Not sure how it compares but if it works it works, cheers.
I don't oil my lead screws. They came greased from the factory and oiling them would only wash away the grease. I may grease them periodically, but the manufacturer didn't intend for it to be accessible for lubrication. The thrust bearings for the axis', however do come with oil caps. I use way oil on those as well as the dovetails.
Ever heard the expression "call central casting...."? The reason why these milling machines can be sold so cheaply is that the castings that go into them are made en masse at a central foundry then supplied to individual manufacturing companies for final finishing, each one adding their own custom detail (e.g. handwheel style, motor type, etc) to slightly distinguish their one from a competitor selling the otherwise identical same machine. Likewise, the publicity photos of a sample fully finished machine are also supplied by 'central casting' hence the reason why the way cover on yours is 'missing' (actually not, never intended to begin with).
I can’t comment on these machines specifically, but it’s not too different from the production of a motor casting I worked on a while back. And from what I can see from other examples of this machine, some come with front way covers others don’t. Not sure if it is luck if the draw or production date based
Awesome review mate. At a standard of actual...practical use that many other youtubers should follow. Hello from Tassie.
Nice home mills... my fav home brew coolant is 70% alcohol (isopropyl) mix with light oil (3 part alcohol and 1 part oil). For plastic, I only use alcohol.
I have a Sieg mini milling machine (SX2LF) and I honestly recommend that, unless you want trouble, don't buy a Sieg. The drill chuck head is too slack and wobbles (try spining the Chuck on the machine at low speed and watch how it wobbles), not to mention there is a persistent machine vibration, suggesting that something is unbalanced. There is no electrical wiring diagram on which wires go where. And the DRO scale attachment are a pain in the neck to install, as the scales come in one length and you have to cut the glass scales to size, plus, plus, plus... and the rest. And, depending on where you purchased/ordered the machine from, the sellers are hard to trust. They tell you one thing and it's not even correct, lies! Buyers beware!
Sorry to hear about your experience. I of course have no experience with the X2lf but that does not seem like a well put together machine. I hope that you got it fixed or your money back. Cheers
@@artisanmakes
Money back? Of course, no. All thanks to COVID that played the sickening part and the seller wouldn't refund it. But then, when I used it for the first time testing it, OMG! I found a lot of poorly produced components, the chuck couldn't hold 1 mm drill bit among other thing, including the chuck claws being too lose and so on. But the problem that COVID caused was that there was a shortage of power feeder for this mill. It took two years for new shipment to arrive.
Yesterday I fitter the power feeder on the table. Still have to test it yet. But, It's the quality of Sieg that I don't like.
What if you were to partially submerge the rear side of the column in epoxy granite. Obviously do some surface treatment to the column to promote adhesion. And maybe just partially submerge the very bottom of the base into reinforced concrete or more epoxy granite. You could have J bolts set in the concrete to mount the base and maybe even more J bolts alongside the base to use toe clamps to hold the flange of the base down to promote rigidity. Epoxy granite and concrete both have very good vibration dampening properties as well as rigidity and heft.
Good information here, thanks. Try to avoid the overuse of rising and falling intonation.
Get yourself some sutton carbide endmills, especially one of the E543 types for finishing in steel, the surface finish will blow your mind compared to how HSS behaves in these smaller machines
seeing the depth of cuts ur making in steel, be very glad you didnt get the x2d! in retro I def wouldve saved longer for yours...
Excellent vid, lots of info and fun to watch!
4x6 Bandsaw next? Your arms will thank you :)
Something I've occasionally wondered, watching your videos about improving your mini lathe and mill, that this one brought to the fore, is...
Well, first of all, I don't really know the market, so are there lathes and mills of comparable size (i.e., not jumping out of the "mini" hobbyist scale of machine) that are of noticeably better stock build quality (and thus not requiring a series of projects up front to correct all the little discount shortcuts that you've found in yours; thus also probably more expensive)?
If there are, has any kind of analysis ever been done on the cost of "buy a more expensive machine of better stock quality" vs. "buy a cheaper model and do however many projects (and possibly subprojects for tooling creation) it takes to bring it to equivalent quality to the more expensive model" ? ("Cost" meaning materials, consumables, and at least a notional idea of whatever monetary value you might assign to your labor if you were doing the work to get paid.)
I just think it'd be interesting to know whether the Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice applies here. That is, if you can afford the cost of one machine vs. the other up front, is it more economical to buy the cheap machine as a fixer-upper, or just start out with the more expensive machine that doesn't require all that effort? (I suppose there's possibly a secondary consideration to be had, regarding getting the cheap one anyway if you need a bunch of projects to learn machining skills with.)
I am by no means an expert on the range of hobby mills, but I am not aware of many manufacturer that makes really high quality mills for around the same price. Precision Matthews is a brand that springs to mind (Quinn at Blondihacks has one) that seems to have comparable mills. They are Taiwanese made, have a similar design to this and seem to have better quality control and after sales support.
Same goes for the brand optimum, they make mini mills that I have seen for sale at my local machinery house, however they seem to cost a lot more for less value, but on the flip side, have local customer support.
Of course there are the Sherline and Taig and Proxxon Mills which seem to be high quality but are much smaller.
Overall unless there is a big used market, smaller mills seem to have a fairly narrow range of options. As for the time spent upgrading , ultimately it is always up to you and how far you want to take it. This is a hobby for me and I get the most enjoyment out of fixing up these low end machines.
Cheers
@@artisanmakes checkout Paramount Browns next time. I purchased my lathe from them and have been happy with the price and customer support.
@@artisanmakes Oh, sure. I wasn't expecting "high quality mills for around the same price". What I meant was, like, (all price numbers made up for illustrative purposes) "hm... for this size/approx. feature set, an Ooh La La brand high-quality mill costs $1,200, and an El Cheapo low-end mill costs $900 but will require $200 in tooling, another $200 in materials, and an unknown amount of time making parts and making tools to make parts and etc. to bring the El Cheapo up to the quality level that the Ooh La La comes out of the box with," etc.
But yes, admittedly there is also something to be said for buying a machine you know will be a fixer-upper just for the fun/educational experience of doing those projects.
Excellent well explained review. Thanks for taking the time to do it. Much appreciated!
Thank you for a fantastic walk-thru of this mill. I have an HBM BF25L Vario mill and it is quite similar to yours. I have been having issues with vibrations or some sort of incapability of milling properly. Maybe it is due to that I haven't tightened the mill properly to a solid base. I have yet to make a fly cutter in the lathe but that will be next. The end mill I have is probably of low quality and thus giving poor results. Thank you for a very inspiring video and also the other ones regarding your lathes. You have a new subscriber now 🙂
I have just bought the SX2.7L. I measured the Y-axis travel and only get 170mm (with the rear bellow removed), spec says 190mm? What is your travel?
I also made a couple of improvements:
I added 2 very thin magnets to the spindle spanner, now it stays in place while I change tools (and hangs on the front face when not used)
I added 2 paint marks to the outside of the spindle where the spindle spanner holes are, much easier to find and insert the spanner now
Still waiting on some tools to really get into it
hahahaha! Even the closed captions hears mule instead of mill! Great video BTW!
Cheers, I've always found the auto captions it to be janky at best.
This seems like it would be perfect to mill Gun parts at home for a hobbyist. If that sort of thing is legal in the region the person is in of course.
I have a project idea for you! Power feed for the head so your arm dont get tiered ;)
Great video from beginning to end brother 👍👍
13:30 actually great thing that you said that ^^ i just now bought a mill, because i couldnt get the taper out of my old drill press, well party, and also, mill super useful lol,
anyway long story short, altho i was not able to remove the chuck, simply plugging in a milling bit and trying to mill, and its out, easy as that.
Thanks for showing this. Why would they not differentially harden the end mill to allow a jaw to key in? Do the premium ones do this?
It’s not that the chuck jaws are hardened that’s the problem. That’s a common misconception. It’s that a drill chuck, being made for drilling, not milling, grips the tool with just three lines of compression, whereas a mill holder, whether a collet of solid holder, grips the bit all around, with the solid holder securing it with a Weldon flat and screw. It literally has hundreds of times more gripping area. And high quality collets can be as hard as the part being gripped.
Nice video and very informative. Looks like a nice small mill to play around with in the shed. Thanks for the time and effort you put into your videos. Cheers Dave..
Thank you very much for this . absolutely useful in so many ways.
My wish is that (seemingly) no manufacturer produces a drill press with built in Quill lock.
My requirements are no so much metal machining, but true calibration in X,Y,Z axis`s for wood . Consequently I now find I have to search in the milling field for my requirments.
Again, thank you.
Embrace your new hobby. I've been using machinist techniques for years on dead tree carcasses and I find that I probably arrive at solution much more quickly than most wood workers. Need an exact width dado? Set up your dado set to near the width you need and then make a test cut. Check the width of the test cut with calipers and then add or subtract shims as needed. I've yet to do more than one test cut to get exactly what I want. No more swapping shims, testing, swapping shims, testing, etc. One test cut. One adjustment. Done.
Great review I love the videos you make they are very informative Im in the market for an X2.7 mill.
Thought i would share my experience with mini-mills v/s an actual Bridgeport. Unless you’re doing very light duty work on very small parts, suck it up and get a real Bridgeport (if you have the room) they made a small table version. After doing all the upgrades available for my mini mill to make it half way usable, i would have spent the same as i did eventually on a used Bridgeport. These mini mills just do not have the torque to drill or mill anything with any authority besides small alum/brass parts. I had an R8 spindle mini mill and it just couldnt do what i needed.. (hot rod chassis and related work) Good used Bridgeports are still out there, yes youll need a phase converter but i was so much happier with a real machine.. learn from my mistake!!
I will say, the harbor freight mill I just axlcquired uses an R8 collet instead of a morse taper. So you don't lose space getting a chuck that needs collects.
This isn't an exclusively R8 thing you can also get direct collets in MT3
Brilliant analysis Art lots to think about, thanks for your thoughts.
Yes, this was a long one, but very usefull!!! Thanks mate!
Glad it was helpful, cheers
I bought a Grizzly Mill G0704 and Lathe G0752. Are they perfect? Not really. Can they make better parts than they should? That is up to the operator. I make perfect parts with my less than perfect machines. Why? Because I use dial indicators and calipers alot. I also upgraded my lathe compound and tool post which was a massive improvement and made a huge finish difference. I use collets for milling. The drill chuck is only for drilling, though I have used it for some quick milling that didnt need a perfect finish. Shars Tools is a great place for top notch items.
Lots of info you don't normally get, very good, cheers
Glad you enjoyed it, cheers
Excellent vidéo pour une excellente petite fraiseuse ! Juste ce qu'il fallait pour bien la connaître et y apporter des améliorations 👍👍👍
I really loved your video thank you so much for taking the time to make it , I’m new to machinery and want to give it ago.
Cheers, thankyou
I am pleased to see how you treat your machines and how accurate your work is.
I have a newbie question - how much space above mill do need to operate it ? (I have limited vertical space)
As a newbie am thinking seriously of getting a bench mill. I found your run down excellent with an affordable unit, it sounds great. Any further vids for updates? Adelaide boy here. .
Thanks a lot for this great Video
Happy New Year 🥳🥂
How do you make fine adjustments on the head ?
Seems to be very difficult without macro adjustment. The macro adjustment on the quill is not very good. It's loose and it's not even accurate. I get almost 0.5mm error on a 50mm travel of the quill.
I ended up mounting 3rd axis dro to the spindle housing underneath and it was way more accurate. But still, entire spindle assembly is not very rigid to use macro adjustment on it.
Need to come up with a micro adjustment for the had and that way I can attach z axis sensor to the head. It will be more accurate this way. Attaching it to the spindle housing introduces flex play of around 0.04mm if am not mistaken. I want 0 but oh well.
It is not easy. I have the gibs done up very tight on the head to minimise slop. To measure the adjustment I will use an indicator to see how far the head drops or quill if I'm using the quill. And to be fair to this machine I used this method with a larger mill a few years ago when I needed precise measurements.
Thanks for the review! Regarding the USB led lights, Ikea has nice ones for 3€
I was thinking something like that, however I have a good amount of studio lighting for filming so lack of lighting isn't a huge issue, cheers.
Great video. In a 16’x10’ building tools fight for space so if I get one be like that. First of year maybe November or December if ole lady nice to me. Lol. Let me get early. Love video’s. Keep up good job. From ur ole hillbilly buddy stay safe.
Sound a good thorough review
G’day. Nice video - again. What else have you done with the mill & lathe except made parts for the…mill & lathe. lol. Joking, your parts are always great to see.
Also, much cheaper to buy a mill with cheapest motor and then replace the motor with a more powerful brushless. They’re cheap as chips!
[The USB ports: one is for charging your phone and USB port 2 is for loading your CAM files. 😉 ]
Hey, I got a “temporary pleated black blind” from Spotlight. About 6ft x 6ft for $15. GR8 way cover! Just cut what you need. 👌
A quick question: what is involved in increasing the Y axis movement? Is it doable? (within reason as everything is ‘doable’) Michael, Albury NSW
Hehe i do make other stuff in the workshop but I tend not to film it because I don't think its too interesting. Love the pleated blind idea, definitely a DIY approach
Not too sure about a practical way of increasing the y travel. You'd probably have to modify the lead screw and the lead nut to allow the table to move further forward. Not sure how practical it would be
What I found is the spindle bearings are loose causing chatter and lack of accuracy. And there’s too much backlash in the table screws. You have to be real careful climb milling. Maybe I’m just spoiled from using Bridgeport mills. It’s basically a glorified drill press.
bought one new and the z column was knife thin at the top where the dovetails met the metal. I returned it but the store was hesitant and gave me troubles. Got a second one, same thing but at the bottom of the column where the bolts hold it. A bridgeport style mill is the best choice when possible...
Sorry to hear about that, not a problem with mine bit that is a risk with these mills. I'd always love to get a knee mill but they aren't common here and I'm not sure about the price the would command. Plus I'm not even sure it would be possible to put it in my workshop. Cheers
@@artisanmakes they need to design a mill that fits right into a modern garage, or change the housing codes to make the garage doors a tad higher
Very informative channel so much so i bought the SIEG SX2.7L , would i be correct in my measurements for the linear scales X=700 Y=500 Z=400 any advice greatly appreciated, keep up the good work.
You probably dont need that much for the x and y. Whatever the table movement it. I think you could safely go 500 or 600 for the x and 350 or 400 for y. Just make sure that is correct, it has been a while since I bough mine. I got the 700mm X linear rails and they almost didnt fit on the table
Thanks for your time , love the channel
If ever there was an ideal way to hold anything in a spindle it has to be the R8 system.......for twice the usability you can mount a tool shank or insert a collet to hold the cutter directly in the spindle thus saving a lot on Z height and gaining lots of rigidity..........second to that is the MT3, but you can have tool seizure problems with the Morse taper due to it's slow taper.
I agree with you there. If R8 was more common in Aus. I might have gone with that. Its mostly MT3 and NT40 tapers that ive seen on machinery here. Cheers
@@artisanmakes I have ISO40 on my big mill..........going to R8 shouldn't be a problem as all your tooling comes from China via EBAY anyway.
One big advantage with R8 is that you can mount a 20mm collet and use 20mm plain shanks for quick change (and economy) like the TTS method.
The other very popular shank is the ISO30, but having a shank and a chuck on the end does lose some Z height whereas R8 direct in the spindle doesn't have that problem.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown :-)
Good day Sir, appreciate and enjoyed your video. I cannot say I've ever had an R8 taper tool just fall out after loosening the drawbar...however, that is only experience from 2 or 3 different Bridgeport clones, not a Chinese hobby machine although, if the taper is correctly made, should be no difference. I mention this as added info for someone
I use my pillar drill for milling,
It is slower but does the job.
I would love to have one like that but I got the 3 in 1 lathe mill drill combo from HF Central machinery 4414something. It's just like the grizzly g9729 and let me tell you it's a great and very capable machine I got it 3 years ago for 2000 bucks so I'm I use it more than the X2 or the mini lathe
Great video enjoyed it very much.
这种结构的铣床简直就是玩具，他的X轴行程是可以达到500mm，但是在确保精度情况下的行程不到300mm，X轴行程越接近最左或最右，他向下摆动的虚位就越大，有些机器的虚位可达1mm！正确的结构是左右行程的底座宽度至少500mm，用线轨代替燕尾轨。
Great video mate! I have always wanted a mill and have looked at these. Be great to add to the arsenal!
I bought a small milling machine with a fixed colem similar to yours but mine is close in size to the x2 milling machine .
Love the full information video 👍.
Awesome, glad to hear it. I saw some X2 mills with a solid column too, but with bigger table and the sale at the time I ultimately chose to go with he 2.7. How is the solid column on the x2, do you think its rigid enough?
@@artisanmakes yes it's rigid. The table size is 400mm×120mm
@@artisanmakes and it has a 600w motor
@@motari6249 Interesting, when I was lookign at the sieg range, they have a huge range of different x2 mills, looks like you got one of the better ones, cheers.