First test of homemade milling machine

[engineer steve]

The first test of my drill to mill conversion. There is still a lot of work to do.

[marksbug]

too slow for me, but I can see for some instances and people thats great if you cant get a mill.get it as ridged as possible or it will eat up end mills. I have a drill press that will barley drill holes it's so underpowered and uses a 8mm star shaft for the drive.... tiny belt,that wont transfer power at the low speed as the belt has somuch friction going around that tint pully abd bending way more than it was made to do...and has not got enough power at any faster speeds...so I use it for drilling plastic.( it's a floor standing model)oh well I have 2 mills, if that drill press I have had bigger/better drive I would just add more power and change pully's/belt. I bought it new 20 years ago or so...I should of looked at it good before buying it.I never thought they would take the time to make something this bad.

[engineer steve]

I am working hard on making the setup more rigid, this test was just to see what it is able to do at this point. Right now it has a 350W motor but that will be changed to a 500W motor that I already aquired for this purpose.

[marksbug]

500 is still pretty week for this. I learned long ago the money put into things like this should of been put to a purpose made item that will do the job with ease. in the long run the savings in milling bits and assoicated items in the build and the end result of what can be done usualy out weighs the build my self, yes this is homade tools, I like your work and thinking, it all looks great,but sometimes that needs to be put into the jigs and upgrades to a less than steller machine(wore out, or the low quality china stuff we see nowdays, Im not sure why the quality has gone down in stuff like this from china with all the high tech they have to build it with now, but much of the quality of 30+ years ago is gone now, I have a 4 year old 9x20 lather that was pure **** when I got it new...I fixed most of it, but it's still way to flexiable for quality.( the bed flexes extreamly eazely)) it's going to be a little hard to stiffen yours up enough to do any hard stuff and not kill the end mills,Ive found the super cheep china end mills to work great for the price and you dont mind resharpening with die grinder disc or throwing them away when there dead. the collum is kinda small too witch invites flex&vibration, possibly it could be filled with concreate,Im not sure.but that may help some...but if it dont then...it's there for good, perhaps somebody else has some suggestions. possiably try to make sure the collum is clamped real good on the head as well as base& table assy. when I was a kid I would make lost of stuff like this usualy just to get one or 2 things done that I needed.not perfect but enough to getter done... Ive seen many machines in scrap yards I wish i had, if not to use my self as they were or to uses portions to make something. many machine shops have old machines that are no longer used and taking up room...those can be gotten cheep,I turned down a free mill or something one time.(long ago and cant remember exzactly what it was.).. Now...I wish I had gotten it. any older machine rusted wore out or whatever can be repurposed to oh so many other things especially with a brain like yours!!! keep your eyes open, and stop by any shop that may have machines in it...and some that wont have any will have some . remember a old machine is heavy. heavy is ridged.even if it's a starting point to start mounting stuff to. rust dont mater, clean it, pick out the rust debris, giving it a smooth surface isant hard to do by hand. and doesnt take long. Keep up the great work and keep your brain working !!!!! and keep posting, as well as looking at other things to draw ideas from. remember many dough mixers can be turned 90 degrees and make a taffy puller its all in how you look at things!!!

[engineer steve]

Thanks for your support! From the start I knew that this machine isn't going to cut steel with 15mm endmills, the expectations are much lower. Unfortunately I do not have space for much bigger equipment, if I happen to own a bigger shop in the future I would like to invest in bigger (perhaps older) machines to do the real work. My goal is to achieve similar performance as, for example, a €1000 mini mill. Hopefully this machine will enable me to do work that can't be done without milling machines.

[DIYer]

Thanks engineer steve! We've added your Milling Machine to our Milling category,
as well as to your builder page: engineer steve's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Milling Machine by engineer steve

tags: drill press, mill