Plans, projects and How-to's for Home Machinists and Other Makers
This tutorial was written by Earl Hackett, who graciously gave me permission to republish it here. Earl found that even though his mini-mill was trammed correctly, different length drill bits were not hitting the same spot on the work piece. He found that the spindle was slightly tipped and tilted instead of being square with the column. … Read the rest
I took a couple of machine shop classes and got spoiled by the X-axis power feeds on the Bridgeport mills. Ever since then I have thought about adding one to my Harbor Freight Mini-Mill (Sieg X2).
Beside reducing wear and tear on your arm and the boredom of turning and turning and turning a wheel, a power feed can produce a better finish on your parts because it moves the table at a more uniform speed than you probably can. … Read the rest
I recently needed to mill down the thickness of a 7-inch long piece of steel from .25-inches to .20-inches. As the metal became thinner I started getting chatter and a bad finish on the ends because they were not being supported enough by my 3.5-inch wide precision screwless vise and 6-inch parallels.… Read the rest
A problem with the Sieg X2 mini-mill [HF 44991, Grizzly G8689, Micro-Mark & others] is that the head can suddenly drop down while you’re milling. Everything will seem fine until the head suddenly drops a bit, which causes the end mill to try to cut too much metal at once, causing the table to start shaking as much as the play in the gibs allows. … Read the rest