The Steel Guitar Forum

i have been making pedal steels for a couple of years now and i'm ready to buy a milling machine.
i don't think i need a cnc but a manual. could someone please recommend one? any replies would be appreciated. thank you A.J.

If you take your time the Enco mill/drills are fine and only cost about $1500 (+/-). I would strongly advise getting a DRO (digital read out) and Shooting Star in Canada has a nice 3 axis one for $750.

Here is a link to a machine that a lot's of small shops use. It is sold by several other companies under other names for different prices. I am only sending this as it shows the machine NOT because it is the best price on the net. It is a combination mill/drill with R8 spindle. If you don't need to machine endplates from raw stock then you might be able to get by with a machine like this.

If not, get a Bridgeport. There are so many machine tool shops going out of business in America that surplus machinery that has not been shipped out of the country is easy to find for bargain prices.

http://www.penntoolco.com/catalog/produ ... oryID=4943

I have been working in machine shops all my life, forty years. I have seen very nice bridgeports go for as little as a thousand dollars, including power drives and readouts. I have seen CNC mills auctioned for as little as 1,500.00.
Don't buy a bridgeport clone if you can find the real thing.
I ran bridgeports for over twenty years before getting into CNC and those machines can do just about anything.
You can also retrofit them with two axis CNC capability down the road. In the meantime you might need some accessories to do certain details such as a rotary table and indexer and a ninety degree head. With any luck you can find one with those acc. included and with all the collets etc.

A.J. Just contact Martin Weenick. He builds quality, great looking steels and he will be able to tell you exactly what you want. That man is an artist. Look at some of his pictures posted on here and you will agree with me.

sent you an email about a couple of machines for sale.

Here is some of his work.





ernie

I worked for a Bridgeport distributor for 8 years. If you want a Bridgeport mill, buy an older one. No newer than the late eighties. The quality of their machines went so far down that the imports were a much better buy. They went to cheap bearings. We used to get them 20 at a time (every couple of weeks) and at least one third of them had noisy bearings, bad vari-disks, or flat spots in the belt. This is a major reason they are out of business today (Although I think Hardinge bought the rights to the BP Standard and possibly the EZ-Trak).

Make you a great deal on a new table saw, just used once,
Bobbe

Pal I have 3 already, thanks anyway.

your frend ernie c

If you buy used, and yer using it at home, be sure to check out the motor voltage requirements. It's a pain gettin' 3 phase at home...

You can get Transformers and phase converters for home use to make the transition from 120v to 240v (transformer needed - you will most likely end up with 240 single phase - phase converter turns it into 3 phase which is what you need) for the mill to operate. This is fine with manual mills, but can create problems with CNC machines. We had very limited warranty policies on CNC machines running on a phase converter. But, many still use phase converters for CNC's. You just have to get one that can handle the machine and hope for the best. I can remember many times having to send a service tech to a home shop only to find that the owner had the wrong type of phase converter (you want a rotary phase converter) or an under rated one. No machine problem at all.

I would not buy an Enco bench/mill. Had one and didn't like it. On a bench mill if you have to raise the head, it's hard to relocate your bench mark. There are plenty of Bridgeports and Bridgeport look-a-likes.
Be sure to get one with an R-8 spindle. I had two Bridgeports and two look-a-likes. All four where good machines.

I just checked the website for the company I used to work for, and Hardinge is marketing the Bridgeport Series 1 standard, and the newest incarnation of an Ez-Track (Automated - limited CNC- Series 1 mill - very good machine if you try not to use it as a full blown machining center) and still using the Bridgeport name on them. But, I hope Hardinge (a very good quality company) fixed the quality problems that Bridgeport developed in their last 10 -15 years of operation. If they use the same parts Bridgeport did, then they will be the same piece of crap as before.

Best to buy an older Bridgeport. Used to see Bridgeport's that were built in the 50's & 60's still in operation and functioning better than a brand new one. They have pretty much stayed with the same parts over the years, so the bearings, vari-discs etc would be the same for a new Bridgeport as it would for a 20 year old Bridgeport.

Thank you All for the replies.