Small prototyping mill/lathe

[Deburred -]

Hi all

Just getting a budget together for our factory workshop. Wondering whether there's any experience out there in the hive mind with  recent small scale milling machines and lathes. We'd mostly be machining plastics and brass, very occasionally steel. Small prototype parts - imagine bicycle component scale. Could be NC but not necessarily Generally want to avoid using and managing coolants in quantity.

We could maybe spend up to 6000 on both (mill and lathe total) not including tooling.

Thanks, input much appreciated! Take it easy,

Dan

[deanforbes]

for the Mill I would see if I could get a good price on a  Optimum MB4- there are a chinse Mill but a very very good one- I would look at adding a DRO in this day and age many people cant work with out one and they do trully make it a lot easier and improve the consistency of the work comming of the machine 

lathe there are a number of cheap imports but what could be good id some like  the WM 250V LATHE INVERTER DRIVE VARIABLE SPEED I again would add a DRO 

DRO are cheap as chips if got from china and there is very little difference 

[Jonathan Hodgson]

I was also going to suggest the Optimum MB4, not that I know a huge amount about milling machines, but having seen the quality and range of work Stefan Gotteswinter does with his. This includes work for actual paying customers, not just shop projects and stuff to fill YouTube videos.

He's made a variety of improvements to his, but I believe it was pretty decent "out of the box".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSjLhEWY1Vg&t=603s

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "London Hackspace" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to london-hack-sp...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/0115673f-015b-45c4-9c7b-e7e4983115e4n%40googlegroups.com.

[Deburred -]

Thanks Dean and Jonathan

The Optimum range looks pretty good for our needs. Will be investigating!

Cheers

D

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/CADh6NCMXO4hDwMdwjdb6nYX_0Ojq69mipdNofoiOCi7RZqT6JA%40mail.gmail.com.