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Post the last thing you bought!


JBLoudG20

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The wait is going to be brutal but I chose to get it from a reliable source rather than risk ordering direct and maybe getting it a bit sooner but with no support. I would have loved to go with an older, full sized mill but everything available locally was enormous or prohibitively expensive. This mill should be capable of everything that I should think about making in my shop, larger more complex things can still be farmed out.

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The wait is going to be brutal but I chose to get it from a reliable source rather than risk ordering direct and maybe getting it a bit sooner but with no support. I would have loved to go with an older, full sized mill but everything available locally was enormous or prohibitively expensive. This mill should be capable of everything that I should think about making in my shop, larger more complex things can still be farmed out.

cool stuff Nate. What sort of things would you expect to be able to do with this?

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cool stuff Nate. What sort of things would you expect to be able to do with this?

Basically be a lot more precise and accurate with any type of machining that I've been doing on my drill press or by hand. It'll also be nice to be able to provide ventilation other than hundreds of holes in panels that didn't come that way (say, from Context or Lansing) and also do more in the way of custom chassis fab from the ground up simply by buying the raw materials and making it soup to nuts. The mill coupled with the lathe should also open up a world of potential with knobs, shaft couplers, tube rings, etc. I don't expect to be using this stuff all the time or even a ton but what I wanted was stuff that when I went to use it wasn't fighting me half the time. The huge lathe that I have now (Craftsman 48") is just way bigger than I need and not at all suited for the type of small scale work (grado cups) that I've used it for 90% of the time. And the drill press is great for hole, but hard to hold work pieces in place with and not particularly good at working with metal in general. So the mill, for me, will most often just be a fancy drill press with a huge x-y table.

Oh and I figure from time to time I can bang out a few custom parts for you yahoos around here too.

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I just got a PanaVise with a few accessories. So far, it seems to work a lot better than the radioshack helping hand that I've used up till now.

Yup, the Panavise will definitely work a lot better than any helping hand. I still use mine on just about every project I work on.

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Decided it was time to be able to cut something other than a round hole...

Should be here in 8 weeks or so which gives me enough time to deal with how I'm going to fit it in my shop along with the new lathe.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!!

Very impressive piece. For some reason I'm having visions of a custom top panel for a Starving Student languishing in my desk drawer...

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Nate my dear boy, you set the benchmark in artifact and in practice. I hope that you enjoy with the greatest satisfaction in the machinary :)

Thanks Doug, with the help a few friends we've already cooked up some pretty cool stuff to start working on when the mill arrives. The lathe arrives this Friday and I'm looking forward to getting that setup as there are a few things that I can start working on using just that.

In the same vein: [1]Brown Sharpe dial test indicator set and [1] Starrett depth micrometer. Both are about as old as I am and I suppose I'm odd that I'd rather have nice used tools than shiny new ones.

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