A home have experience or know anything about this thing https://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=3502&category=1241045623
LMS is generally okay, but they are largely a rebadge of imports. The MT2 spindle will be somewhat limiting. Ballscrews are sweet. Z envelope is pretty good, but that’s a pretty limited Y. Still, just try to match that price with anything else.
@John_Bump what will the spindle limit me too? I tried a sherline but unfortunately it just did not have the support behind it for cnc
I’m running a sherline cnc right now. Yeah, they have some issues. 80% of mills in our size have an R8 spindle. At least MT2 is a common size. It’s just harder to find collets and much harder to find boring heads and slitting saw arbors in MT2 than R8. (Not impossible: at worst, you can buy Sherline MT1 stuff and sleeve it, and LMS sells some MT2 stuff for lathes.)
@John_Bump how is that spindle in comparison to the sherline? Basically this machine looks more Cnc capable plus the enclosure and it’s ready for a flood system.
Dunno, but the sherline’s an mt1 so this has to better. And yeah flood coolant would be an enormous help. I’ve trashed a lot of pieces when aluminum starts sticking to the milling bit and everything goes south because I can’t get coolant on there.
It looks like a square column mini bench mill to me. The old X3 Sieg model was pretty famous. The head on this is a little different though. Here is essentially the same base machine with the much more common R8 spindle http://www.micromark.com/MicroLux-High-Precision-Heavy-Duty-R8-Miniature-Milling-Machine,9616.html
The little machine shop setup has retrofitted ball screw leads, and the stepper motors are mounted. Now whether that is worth an additional $3,000 I don’t know. I guess it depends on how much of a hurry you are in to get up, and running.
Update Here’s the Cadillac of square column mini mills https://www.amazon.com/Grizzly-G0619-Mill-Drill-21-Inch/dp/B000M66WKO They’re still pretty tiny though. It is an awful lot of money for a machine with limited capabilities.
@Paul_Frederick I guess what’s appealing is the enclosure and the ability to add a flood system. The size is fine as I don’t plan on anything too hg to start and the next machine that seems to have all these features is double the price
@Derek_Schuetz
I don’t flood cool myself. I have a mister, but I don’t even use it. I just brush on a little cutting oil. The enclosure may contain the coolant, but when you are done running you still have to clean all of the coolant up off the machine. I got tired of doing that myself too.
@Paul_Frederick But your manually clearing chips?
@Derek_Schuetz
chips don’t clear themselves.
On paper this is a good price point, but the unknown is support. I know LMS is a good shop, but will they be able to handle all the funky problems that newby CNC customers manage to dredge up. The savings on this is not that much over a Tormach when you consider your total cnc spend. In the end, you’re not spending $4300 vs $4900 (for a Tormach 440), but more like $8000 vs $8900 after coolant, vise, tooling, and all the other stuff you end up needing.
@Len_Sherman looking at this it looks like the system with coolant will be about 5k. The complete tormach 440 system is 10500. Trust me I want a tormach just don’t have a place to put it
@Derek_Schuetz
yeah there’s a direct relationship between machine size, mass, and capability. The bottom line is there’s a lower limit past which machines can’t really do what the bigger ones can. Not even really a little. To take a healthy slice off a piece of ferrous metal takes quite a bit of machine behind the tool. I can’t be sure, because I’ve never operated one, but based on my experience I’d guess a X3 is just too light to really cut ferrous metal. I’ve run my mill, Bridgeports, and even big K&Ts too. So I’ve some experience with the whole milling thing.