I have 240 3 phase wired to the main building, so that should not be an issue. The equipment would be on the back wall, not 5 feet from the box.

Redshift - that there was definitley engineers porn.....love it! I liked how they were doing the fan blades - must have been part of a prototype process.

Linc - I talked with one of my mechanics at work this morning. He has been building his own submarine over the last 5 years, and he bought one of those Grizzly combo units. He said it works good as a lathe, but for the mill portion, he has issues keeping the dovetails true - and that is what I was thinking the difference will be between cheaper machines and some a little higher end. He said if he could do it over again, he wouldn't have bought this one. He didn't know which he would have bought, but he said he'd of spent more money. He did say that the place he bought it at had both grizzly and jet, and he thought at the time the Grizzly seemed to be built better. Now he's not so sure. In the store, neither one seemed like the dove tails had any slop - but they probably had so much grease packed into them that they felt solid.

So uh, just your average tinkerer then.. :tongue:

The problem is there are really only Grizzly or HF for choices with the combo machines. There are a few disadvantages with combos, but are outweighed by the advantages IMO.

One example would be that your lathe chuck doubles as an indexer. Another is the ability to do spin-milling. For cutting large square recesses on shafts, that can be priceless. I have been annoyed with some projects in the past, having to go between the lathe and the mill. Because you need to re-find your reference point every time...

I think unless you are doing military-spec work, any of the HF or Grizzly machines would do quite well. The size of the machine needs to be determined by whatever the individual deems sufficient.

As for the venerable Bridgeport, I have used good ones and really sloppy ones. That's almost entirely a matter of how they were maintained, but no consolation when you need to hold +- .001 on a machine with 5X or more that amount of slop.

That illustrates my philosophy I guess. Do more, with less!

Just droppin a few more I had collected.

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Embedding disabled on this one- and no it's not a RickRoll
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhkWINPRK3A





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Your killing me Redshift....I'm gonna have carpet burns soon - people are going to start talking about me and Harold...

I had high hopes for friction stir welding when it first showed up a couple years back. It appears to have hit the limitations that we all thought it might have.

We have quite a few of those orbital welders in our tube and duct shop. Neat machines - put a few welders out of work though.

Ha I wasn't trying to seduce... the women could learn a thing or two here huh?

I was looking for a vid, can't find it. 10+ years back I saw on some show, they were cutting the propshafts for an aircraft carrier... showed this massive lathe taking what appeared to be about 3/4" or more cut. As in 3/4" DEEP. The chip coming off it was easily a hundred pounds per minute, just insane. Turned slow as hell, but just amazing to see. Century Turn makes a vertical lathe with either a 12 or 16 foot chuck. I couldn't find that on YT either...

What I would really love seeing, are the machines that make these machines. That kind of stuff is very elusive it seems...

And I just cracked a thousand posts :party:

you say that like it's a bad thing:neutral:

That would be amazing. I cant even fathom that kind of a cut - the stress in that cutter AND the material had to be huge! Had to have been loud...
Would they have been making it out of Aluminum? Just can't imagine cutting steel like that.

I cant even think of something to say to cover my ass on this one!!!!:na:

It was steel, chip turned a nice blue coming off. The shaft was 3 to 4 feet diameter, and I'm pretty positive they said there were 40 foot sections, and multiple sections per screw. They showed the welders joining the sections of the hull as well, I wish I could find that, I think it may have been on TLC?

I was talking with my machinist yesterday about that, and he said he wouldnt be suprised to see that for the rough cuts. He said with the advancements in the heads, you could pretty much cut the same dia as the cutter head. He said that now with the removable bits, you could likely do more than that. Very impressive tech.

Certainly wasn't the finish cut, but yes I remember thinking- how does the toolbar not just snap off!

Steel was sloughing off like it was wax... incredible.

Get one of these.

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Very cool
 

That was very cool to watch. I could imagine seeing the techs viewing that machine at work looking like a bunch of kids watching porn drooling on the floor. We all wish that we could have a machine like that in our shops.

I'm in need of a drill press, but dunno which one to buy. I want to buy it in Europe, because shipping from the USA is far too high. I want to spent about $100-$150 on it. Today I went to some shops, and looked at some drill presses, you could really notice the difference on them. There was one for $60, one for $100 and one for $230 or something like that. The one for $60 had on all parts a bit of play, also on the drill chuck about 2-3mm. The one for $100 had a bit less play, and the one for $230 had almost nothing.
So there was (of course) a difference between them. But what are the best price/quality brands? I really don't know for what I should look for. Serum already advised me a 'Ferm', they're cheap and look good.

So, for what Brand should I look for? (Should be avaible in Europe)

budget??
 

The major choice here depends on the budget that you are working with. Over in the UK you have access to Festool equipment which is one of the best in quality for Eu. I found that they are also one of the most expensive in most cases. Like you stated there are different levels of quality which only you can decide at what level you wish to work with. For my own taste I try to get something that is of the best quality that I can afford with whatever budget I am working with. I dispise having to use something of crapy quality so I try to go for fairly high quality, which usually equates to higher pricing, but then I know it will last a long time and give me the best work possible.