Thread: Tell me about mills and the like

There is some discussion about the No.O in the Hercus forum.

Here is a link to a thread started by Surfin Nev a few years back. It might be worth a read. https://www.woodworkforums.com/f189/h...del-0-a-82141/

A few of us have the little Hercus mill and yearn for something a touch larger.

BT

The Mill you linked to would probably be ok.

Not knowing what you intend to do on it or any other can be a problem.

With the Hercus it appears to use it in the Horizontal you would need to either make or purchase an Arbor/s and Yoke.

The Arbor would be easy to come by,the Yoke maybe not and if making would require a fair bit of care.

You can at times be limited by the Short bed length and a Lack of Headroom when in the Vertical.

If prolonged use you would soon become annoyed with a lack of powered Longitudinal feed,you would be able to adapt something to suit,but once again would require a fair amount of time/effort.

With the other Seig type mills you mentioned,I have no personnel experience with them,although I have read reports that there gearing can leave a little to be desired when interupted cutting,I believe some of them have Nylon gearing in there head,but steel replacements are available.

Also a lot some issues with the Column not being square to the table,once again there are sites cover re-work for these problems.

I myself have an HM36,I find it quite adequate for the Milling work that I do,this particular mill is a round coloumn mill,I dont find this a problem at all,infact I find that being able to swing the head an asset.

This size mill can accomadate a fairly large size workpiece as well as a reasonably heavy piece.
Power feed units for this style of mill are readilly available,I find the Geared head also an asset as you eliminate belt slip and belt changes for speed.

This style of mill also comes with a Dovetail column

,which in theroy will keep your tooling in line with your job if you have to raise the Head during machining opperations,(this generally only becomes a problem if by some chance you have to use an overly small or large tool during the milling process),normally after setting up your work you would go through your machining plan to check that all opperations can be performed with the mill in the one setup,even if you needed to raise the head to accomadate a larger/smaller cutting tool you would just set you tooling back up to your Datumn and carry on,no real reason to pay extra for the dovetail type in my opinion.

I have also never found Ridgidity to be a problem with the Round column mills,or any sign of the Head rotateing while cutting.

Some of the Milling opperations performed with these Vertical Mill/Drills can take a little longer,when the preffered method would of been to use a Horizontal machine,most of it can be worked around .

Did you see the price that Hercus mill fetched? $2730 I find that astonishing, no bizzare is a better word, given that everyone who owns one seems to complain about it. And with a little patience you can buy a used turret mill for similar money.

Pipeclay I'm glad you said that about round columns. I had not considered them because conventional wisdom is against them. If a cheap one comes my way I will now consider it.

Originally Posted by Bryan

Did you see the price that Hercus mill fetched? $2730 I find that astonishing, no bizzare is a better word, given that everyone who owns one seems to complain about it.

Most of the complaints are related to lack of travel. I have found my No. O to be a pretty versatile machine capable of neat work.

You will find that those of us that own small Euro mills whinge about the same lack of travel.

BT