OldNuc wrote:Lever rebuild will get you right to precision machining either in a mill or good drill press with an X-Y table to closely position the workpiece. Decent drill press and X-Y table is not prohibitively expensive and is also a good general use tool to have. It is possible to drill out elongated pin holes maintaining original centers and re sleeve them so standard pins fit properly and this is probably the quick - easy fix.

Rich: As a newbie all over again who's not familiar with choosing these tools and buying them affordably, what do you recommend?

This is what makes it so much fun. It is worse than picking espresso machine and grinder. There are small size lightly made for building Fn3 and G scale live steam locomotives that are seriously pushed when getting up to espresso size components. Then there is the large class of mini mills and lathes and these are all basically quite similar and most are 100% metric but there are a precious few which are imperial. Metric is fine and lower cost, more bang for the buck. Most are made in China so you can get multiple prices on similar equipment. This is where the equipment that is quite capable of machining quite usable parts without overloading the equipment. I will look for some decent links.

Good thing I found this Thread. I am in the market for a small to mid sized variable speed milling machine. So far the one that rings the bells for me, and please tell me I am wrong if that is the case, is this one.
http://www.grizzly.com/products/Mill-Dr ... -DRO/G0759

Or maybe this one.
http://www.grizzly.com/products/Mill-Drill/G0463

Any thoughts on these machines?

The 2nd link is the current crop of mini mills and they are all somewhat similar machines with a different coat of paint. Grizzly is well known for customer support which is what you really have to consider with these types of tools due to plastic parts that are much more than cosmetic. Grizzly is a well regarded company that does support their products.

This independent company has built a business supplying parts the tooling for all of these machines and is now doing direct selling, http://www.littlemachineshop.com/, they also provide the much needed info to actually get started into using and evaluating these machines.

The 1st linked machine you linked is more in the line of a very small shop mill than a mini mill. Will handle larger projects while be too large for the very small parts.

The Sieg mini milling machines and mini lathes are sold under an amazingly large variety of names. Some of the brands are slightly different. The Little Machine Shop reference in the previous post provides modified parts to replace parts of these machines that lack quality.

All, or at least most, of the mini milling machines sold in the US have weird unit problems from their trying to use fractions and decimal inches together. It is difficult to find them with the standard metric units used everywhere but in the US. I acquired the Harbour Freight brand of it, and discarded all the feed screws and replaced them with standard metric ones from Little Machine shop. Otherwise to move the table you had to have a calculator always nearby. You would have to position things like 3 inches + 5/16 inches + 0.0252 inches! You could not simply use decimal inches! I do not know if the Sieg mills still have the problem, but when I got mine the nylon gears stripped very quickly. One can machine parts to convert it to belt drive or purchase a belt drive conversion from Little Machine Shop. That modification makes it quite robust.

The US sold mini lathes have less problems with units, though you need to have a metric lead screw for cutting threads on almost all scientific instruments, and almost all modern things. I replaced a quite a few parts on my mini lathe with ones from Little Machine Shop, and I used it and the milling machine to make replacements too.

Small machine shop devices are wonderful for espresso machines, and a remarkably large number of projects one encounters practically daily. The Sieg lathes and mills are built like large lathes, and most of their parts are fairly robust, and as I mentioned earlier, one can get spare parts and upgrading parts readily.

Yes Grizzly has very good customer support and the Little Machine Shop usually provides me with the tooling for my small Grizzly Lathe.


You might be right about the size of the machine being a bit to large for real small stuff. I use that mini lathe for super small turning and was amazed how much I could do with larger things. The infinite variable speed ability really makes a big difference.

Thanks for the input

rpavlis wrote:The Sieg mini milling machines and mini lathes are sold under an amazingly large variety of names. Some of the brands are slightly different. The Little Machine Shop reference in the previous post provides modified parts to replace parts of these machines that lack quality.

Small machine shop devices are wonderful for espresso machines, and a remarkably large number of projects one encounters practically daily. The Sieg lathes and mills are built like large lathes, and most of their parts are fairly robust, and as I mentioned earlier, one can get spare parts and upgrading parts readily.

Thanks for the thoughts, I believe you are correct!

A couple of years ago Doug Garrott suggested I look into Proxxon tools. These are made in Germany. What do you think of them?

That is a good question! I have a friend who uses Proxxon hand held grinders and seems to like them.

Here is a nice link to a company where you can (for $) use some high-end machines: http://www.techshop.ws/