Paintball

[LK-13]

anyone out there have any expierence with desk top mills and lathes?

have a look at some of these links and feel free to offer opinions:

The Sherline Lathe, Milling Machine and Precision Miniature Machining Page

MDX-540 Series

Taig Tools - Desktop Milling Machines and Lathes.

[Railgun]

Those are nice for small stuff but forget about chucking any barrels or bodies in there. And even making a bolt for most styles is out of the question.

looking at the specs for the Roland unit says that it's for plastic, resin and light metals. That alone tells me that this thing will be taxed to the limit just doing aluminium. Forget about any steel work with it.


It's also not just about how solid (or not) that these small machines are. Legions of hobbyists have made some amazing stuff and you can too as long as you're patient and take lighter cuts to remove metal. Instead it's about the size of the machine and the ability to hold the project piece AND the tooling you need to do the job. For the lathes you linked to this means you're good to make things like little adapter blocks, new cupseals and valve pins, MAYBE a new delrin bolt for some of them and other objects in the same size range.

The limiting factors are the size of the bore through the headstock and room to swing a body with the feedneck attached in some cases.

Also the Roland is a CNC machine while the other options are manual but in the case of the Sherline have CNC mods available.

Machine tools like this generally rely on mass to provide the stiffness needed and the mass to absorb vibration. As I sais legions of hobbyists have made some amazing stuff but they do it at a scale that is consistent with the size of the machines. Paintball items for the most part are up the scale from what you usually do on such machines.

So my own opinion is to wait and buy something larger for both the lathe and mill or go for something that'll hold the sort of stuff you want in the case of a bench top CNC machine.

[Deus Machina]

Taigs and Sherlines are nice machines, but just don't have the mass for much paintball-type work. And they're horribly small.

The Sieg machines (the 'minis' via Enco, Grizzly, Harbor Freight, and the like) are popular, but are the bare minimum of what you would need, and don't expect to be boring out barrels or bodies with them.

For the price, they're very nice machines, if you put a little work in them. And you can get them used cheaper, and sometimes with some mods to them, such as a lathe with the spindle reamed out enough to accept some barrels through so you could bore them, or (like mine--it's a $10 mod) and extended Z-axis rack on the mill.

I'm very happy with mine, but I knew when I bought them, realistically, that they're limited.

On the other hand, Sieg does make some really nice stuff, considering.

For a 'benchtop' middling on mid-sized, I would not hesitate to suggest--and I'll use Grizzly, here--the C6 lathe or the X3 or Super X3 mills.

Those are the best benchtops you can get, IMHO.

But, if you have the space, you can find some 110 single-phase standalone machines that will be even better. Even a full-sized knee mill, but your power on that would be a little disproportionate to the size.

If you can get 3-phase installed or are willing to put in a phase converter, your choices are limited only to your budget. If I could, I would have myself a Tree mill fit to resurface Cummins diesel blocks and a 21x80 gunsmith lathe.

Sorry to say it, because I really wish it wasn't true, but useable=$. The best thing the Taigs and Sherlines are for are miniature engines. They produce a nice finish, but just don't have the mass or power to hog out any material, and aren't large enough for a 'gun body.

[Deus Machina]

And because it hasn't been mentioned, but will be, expect to pay at the very least as much on tooling as you did on the machine. And some things you can't cheap out on--for example, a milling vice should cost you at least $70 or so, for an import, and you should eventually splurge on high-quality (American or German are my preference) cutters in the sizes you use often.

And just my opinion, if you have a choice, go for R8 taper on the mill. It's technically not the best taper, but it does work pretty darn well, and you can get collets cheap and easy--from $3 crap to decent at $5 all the way up to some great $40 American steel and up to $kidney for stuff made for aerospace-quality operations.

With Morse Taper 3, the next most common for small machines, you can't just stop by your local Enco, Wholesale Tools, or Harbor Freight for collets. And when you do find them via catalog or online, they seem to start at $10 for junk and go up from there.

$12 a collet doesn't sound bad, until you realize that you'll need at least half a dozen, a 1/8" to 1+ set by 8ths in the long run, and preferably by 16ths. And that doesn't even take into account tracking down and paying extra for the occasional odd metric one.

On the plus side, you can find other tooling in MT3. Large drills, boring bars, huge reamers, etcetera, that you would need an adapter or an awkwardly large chuck for, if you were using them in R8. Lathes do tend to Morse Tapers (whereas benchtop mills usually get R8, Jacobs [which forces you to use a chuck] and so on) and it's possible, like with Siegs, to find a mill and lathe that use the same taper in the headstocks.

[LK-13]

super X3 took me to this machine when i clicked on the link
G0619 6" x 21" Mill / Drill

is that the machine you intended? just puzzled by the difference in numbering.
but i really like this one.
the threading feature is a really great option.
i haven't got the shop space for full size machines or i wouldn't even be looking at desk top versions.

[Deus Machina]

Yes, that's the one.

I don't know how they number them. But the Super X3 is the standard X3 with extra features. A tilting head (you won't use it much, but it's nice to have), a tapping feature (nice to have, but you may want to stick to the old-fashioned manual method for small holes), and a small digital readout for the quill position, which would be really nice for drilling blind holes.

These still aren't very small machines, but they're not the giant Bridgeports and such. I do encourage you to keep looking around for what fits you best.

But, since we're on the topic, I actually do have a couple reviews in my favorites anyway. One for the X3 and the Super.

[Railgun]

That's a nice size mill for paintballing. But I agree that it is also the SMALLEST that you want to go with so that you can do whatever you want that is paintball related.

And Deus is right. Overall you'll spend as much again on tooling and accesories. The good news is that you don't need it ALL right away. Also you can save some money and learn at the same time by making a lot of your own tooling where practical. But as mentioned you want a nice milling vise right off the bat. Solid and massive are actually wonderful attributes in metal working machines. The heavier you get the better it is and the bigger the jobs it can do. It's not JUST the sizes. Mass counts for a lot for controlling flex and vibration. And if you don't think a 5 inch diameter steel pipe column can flex then put a dial gauge on the it and start pulling on the head unit. You'll soon see it flexing a few thou. And when you're trying to work to a fraction of that as your tolerance this becomes VERY significant.

Getting into these larger bench top style machines won't be as cheap or as portable but they'll form the core of a new hobby that goes far beyond paintball if you want it to and you'll always appreciate the larger machines and the ease with how they do the jobs.

[Deus Machina]

Railgun's right, there.

A word of thumb when shopping for machines: go big and heavy. And stick with square-column machines when you can. Some round-column ones are alright, but square columns are almost always more rigid, tighter tolerance, and they don't allow the head to twist.

You also really don't need much tooling to start with. A decent vice, your measurement tools, an edge and center finder (which helps you set up the other tooling, too), a drill chuck, then whatever cutting tools you'll use and the collets or tool holders (I prefer collets) for them.

Lathes are easier to outfit, especially for aluminum. Instead of paying for a set of tool bits (though I have a set of indexable ones I love), if you're working with aluminum or plastics, you can head to the tool store and buy a stack of bit blanks for 40 cents a pop. Some time in the grinder will get you the exact bit you need. I would suggest buying an all-purpose set of indexables when you can, though. Especially for steels.

Expect your first year or so of projects to involve running out for a new tool or two.

[Railgun]

40 cents a pop for blanks?!?!?!?! TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE SHOPPING! I"LL BE RIGHT THERE! ! ! !

Seriously though, I'm paying at least $2 even for 1/4 square HSS blanks and on sale my regular 1/2 inch blanks are around $5. Maybe it's a Canada thing....

But yeah, for alloy and plastics I far and away prefer a nice fresh ground French roast... er.. I mean fresh ground High Speed Steel too bit. They DO take a keener edge than you can get from carbide and if you stone the edge and very slightly round the cutting corner they leave most plastics looking polished with no need at all for any further work.

Besides a lot of machine work requires what is called profile or form cutters where the cutter is ground to a specific shape for cutting a specific shape. Examples are Oring grooves and any sort of square grooves, threading tools are form cutting as are any sort of rounding shapes to form a specific radius. Finger grooves in a pump handle are another example of form cutters where the round ended cutter with the flat top is plunged into the workpiece to form the round bottomed groove.

So yeah, a supply of HSS blanks in various sizes is always a good thing to have on hand.

Which brings us to grinding..... A VERY handy part of any machine shop must be a grinder or two. I actually have 4 of them but one is on the floor at the moment. One is set up with a soft green silicon carbide stone for reshaping carbide bits and the other side has a soft bond aluminium oxide stone for grinding HSS tooling. A second grinder is set up with the stock stones for grinding mild steels. A third machine is set up with a wire brush on one side and nothing on the other at the moment. The one on the floor is a two ended tool grinding machine that uses cup stones and is specifically for sharpening carbide and HSS tools. It hasn't been set up since I got it from my father's estate a couple of years back due to a lack of room to get at the ends of the machine. But when I set up my new shop in a year and a bit this will have a place of honor and instant access.

[LK-13]

OK guys...
i worked in machine shops for 10 years,
never got my trade certification because there was
always more work for me as a machine operator.

I'm just trying to find something small that can do the job.
last shop i worked in we were turning rings 75" in diameter and larger.

I'm just not current in my knowledge about newer smaller machines.
i used to do things the good old fashioned way,

MANUALLY! no cnc there... back in the 80's