Opinions on Proxxon Micro Mill MF70?

[rvt]

Opinions on Proxxon Micro Mill MF70?

Proxxon Micro Mill MF70

If funds allow, I'd like to buy a nice small mill to go with my mini lathe in the next few months. I like to modify camera lenses, changing mounts, and various other things. I sometimes make a bit of spare change from it, but I do it really because I just love the character you get from old lenses & using them on a fresh digital format... but anyway, not wanting to get off topic, just giving you a frame of reference.

Basically, I'm workig with quite small 'rings' of pretty soft metal, usually aluminium or brass, never anything very hard, not very thick.They generally range from around 65mm OD to 40mm OD in size. There are usually 4-8 drill points around the ring. Sometimes the countersinking can be an off angles (mentioned in another thread), where I think cutting with a mill would be particularly handy.

At the moment I am using a massive press drill of sorts, made for quite large things (wood, not even metal) and I have no easy way of mounting things either.

What do you think of this tiny Proxxon? I'm thinking many will say it's a very limited machine? I'm not sure, as I've clearly not owned anything like this before, but I also want to be realistic with what it's going to be used for   .

I also saw this, which would attach to my lathe. But I'm sceptical over whether it would really be very stable? It would also mean I would have to buy a different compound table, which would probably put it at the same price as the other machine.

The only other alternative I see is this Axminster SIEG SUPER X1 Micro-Mill Mk2 (and buy a clamping kit seperately).

It would be around £100 more. It would give me more room, but would I really 'feel' that with the work I'm doing? It also adds the 45 degree tilting action, for which I am unsure I would need/why I would use that. I doubt it would be made as well as the Proxxon?

Anyway, sorry for my ramblings... If you've read through that without falling asleep, you get a gold star :P.

Thanks for your time and any thoughts you have to share from your experiences.
Kind regards,
Richard

[Miner]

While I've never owned Proxxon equipment I have heard their pretty well made made, I can't remember what forum I saw it on but somebody CNC'd one of those. Overall I think you might find it a bit small. With what your doing you will want to add some type of dividing head or rotary table to it and You would probably run out of vertical distance between the tool tip and your work very quickly. One thing to remember tho is after the initial cost of the machine, The accesories can add 2 or 3 times that mill cost. For bench top type mills the accesories are pretty much close to the same cost for almost any mill under 500 lbs. If? you find after buying that mill  it's too small for your work You will probably take a fairly large loss in selling it verses what you originaly paid for it. The Seig mini mills do have their faults but there is a huge ammount of information about how to modify around those faults.Plus there's a far larger range of accesories that can be bought to fit that mill, One example would be a boreing head. IMO, A mini mill sized machine would be far more user friendly for the size of work your doing. Always buy the largest mill you can possibly afford and have room for. You will end up with projects later on that are just too large. I own a 3/4 size Bridgeport clone mill and have found projects too large for it. But then again I'm not working on cameras. I have no way of knowing how much you would be willing to spend on a mill but a huge step up in quality,capacity and accuracy over the mini mills would be the variable speed mills built by Weiss machine tools. If you'd like some links to these then please let me know. There's also a few euopean built larger bench top mills made, But they and the accesories are pretty expensive.

Pete

[HS93]

I have a warco X1 and find it very good for the type of stuff I do, it will machine larger items without problems, the arc one is the same but cheaper than the axminster and they do a prep for a small sum,I am not an axminster fan because of there service and spares but have had fantastic service of arc. and have bought a micro mill of them and would buy a X1 of them if I wanted a new one

if you go for a small mill a rotary table can be a bit of a problem, but if you go for some of the new (to me) slimline jobs there is no problem the X1 is very easy to convert to cnc and cheapley, arc also stock most spare and they are very cheap of them compared to axminster

a few pictures of mine you can still manuly mill after the cnc conversion and it milling some mounts for a friend

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Machines-Accessories/Milling-Machines/Model-Super-X1L-Mill

[cidrontmg]

Sorry, I don´t have one, I´ve never used anything of Proxxon. But you might look at this
http://metallmodellbau.de/
I know it´s in german, so you prolly will miss the text - just look at the (very numerous!) pictures. You´ll see what Proxxon machines can do, Achim seems to have a good opinion of them.

[rvt]

Thank you for your thoughts and the info, all very helpful!

I think you make a good point Pete. I am perhaps a bit fixated on the Proxxon because I know they're made a little better and the price is so low. But ultimately, I'd probably be better off spending another hundred or so on something that is a little larger and more versitile... The accessories is something I didn't think about to be honest, as I didn't really think I'd need many for what I'll be doing, but it's a good point, Axminster/Clarke type stuff is much more affordable and easy to find. The Weiss machines are probably incredible, but no doubt out of my price range too. I don't want to spend any more than £400 if I'm honest.

HS93 - thanks for that info. I'm very interested in this machine, it looks like it could be what I'm after, after deciding that I probably need to get something 'larger'. I don't think I'll need a rotary table, I think the standard clamps will probably hold the work best after looking at them more closely.

What do you think about the 'factory assembled' one? Can anyone put this thing together with time and patience, or is it best left to those that know?

The factory assembled price puts it at £300 incl postage, which is attractive, although I would still need some clamps and some cutting tools.

cidrontmg, that all looks very nice, but doesn't mean a whole lot to myself

[DMIOM]

Richard,

just a few thoughts, in no specific order, on finding a machine

1/  When drilling, you need to use a speed which is effectively inversely proportional to the dia of drill bit - so for your tiny bits you'll need high speeds. As mills get bigger, you often find in fact their available spindle speeds slow down! For this reason, I have a Kress 1050 as an auxillary spindle (goes to about 30,000 RPM) on my mills.

2/  Workholding - you need to hold it rigidly, and have some means of drilling holes in a regular pattern around your adapter ring. On a mill, you could (a) mount it on a rotary table, pick up the centre and then wind it round 'n' degrees, or (b) if your mill has a suitable DRO, find the centre and then use the DRO to direct you through a PCD hole sequence.

3/ However, I seem to remember you've got a lathe already ..... and it may be worth considering using the lathe to do the drilling as well, albeit with the main lathe spindle stopped/isolated/locked. You can already fix the work onto a face plate or mandrel, all you need to add is some means of indexing and some 'live tooling', which could be something like the Kress affixed to your cross-slide.

Dave

[lordedmond]

RTV

warco supply weiss machines under there own name if it helps

Arceuro and axminster are sieg machines

chester sell a mix of the two

but as DMIOM has said with the size of drill you have quote you need speed in spades for drilling ( evan for a 5 inch G loco ) i use http://www.chesteruk.net/store/micro_drill.htm
top wak is 5 K rpm note this is a sieg machine they are much heaver than they look with a cast iron base , a good lift for one hand so to speak
Stuart

[DMIOM]

.......The factory assembled price puts it at £300 incl postage, which is attractive, although I would still need some clamps and some cutting tools......

and, as a rough rule of thumb, tooling and workholding will swallow up at least as much again as the cost of the machine. Some kit, such as metrology, is usually equally applicable to various machines, but cutters & workholding are generally specific to either lathe or mill (there are of course exceptions e.g. if you do have a rotary table on the mill, it is very helpful to make it able to receive the chucks straight off the lathe so you don't loose centre).

Dave

[Miner]

RVT,
A couple of more points to ponder, What your projects are today may not nessisarily be what you want to work on next year or even 5 yrs. from now. This is another reason for the largest machine you can afford.

Whatever machine you buy I would strongly recommend getting one with a R-8 taper if possible. These are a industry standard and release from the spindle taper far easier. MT or morse tapers are also comman but are a self holding taper and require tapping on the spindle draw bar with a lot more force. That is not really good for the spindle bearings. Overall R-8 is usually easier to find and has a lot more tooling made for it. If you can't find it in a R-8 taper then you probably don't need it.

Pete

[rvt]

Again, thank you for all the replies and info very helpful, if not confusing but I'm sure I'll come to the right decision.

1/  When drilling, you need to use a speed which is effectively inversely proportional to the dia of drill bit - so for your tiny bits you'll need high speeds. As mills get bigger, you often find in fact their available spindle speeds slow down! For this reason, I have a Kress 1050 as an auxillary spindle (goes to about 30,000 RPM) on my mills.

Wasn't aware of this in complete honesty! However, I've been drilling many small things with the big press drill we have, which goes at about 1,600 RPM and I haven't had an issues as such, apart from the lack of control in the lever and the mounting of the work piece. Is it really that essential? For what it's worth, I'm generally drilling from 1.5mm up to around 4mm. No smaller.

2/  Workholding - you need to hold it rigidly, and have some means of drilling holes in a regular pattern around your adapter ring. On a mill, you could (a) mount it on a rotary table, pick up the centre and then wind it round 'n' degrees, or (b) if your mill has a suitable DRO, find the centre and then use the DRO to direct you through a PCD hole sequence.

I'm not completely confused I could mount it securely on a rotary table for drilling. Because the metal is quite soft and the rings are often quite thin, I'd only tighten it too much and distort it or not enough and it would slip (in my mind atleast). I really thing the claps would work best. I've made some similar things over the weekend and they do indeed hold things very rigidly. I would just move the sliders to get to the next drill point, it wouldn't be much trouble at all.

3/ However, I seem to remember you've got a lathe already ..... and it may be worth considering using the lathe to do the drilling as well, albeit with the main lathe spindle stopped/isolated/locked. You can already fix the work onto a face plate or mandrel, all you need to add is some means of indexing and some 'live tooling', which could be something like the Kress affixed to your cross-slide.

Thanks for that, wasn't aware of such a thing. Kind of looks like a little dremmel of sorts? But not the same, of course. I'm not sure about this personally, for the reasons i mentioned above. I really don't tighten the work piece too much in the lathe, which is fine for that, but perhaps not ideal for drilling.

[rvt]

RTV

warco supply weiss machines under there own name if it helps

Arceuro and axminster are sieg machines

chester sell a mix of the two

but as DMIOM has said with the size of drill you have quote you need speed in spades for drilling ( evan for a 5 inch G loco ) i use http://www.chesteruk.net/store/micro_drill.htm
top wak is 5 K rpm note this is a sieg machine they are much heaver than they look with a cast iron base , a good lift for one hand so to speak
Stuart

Thanks for the info, I will keep that in mind when I choose the 'brand' that I go for. Thanks for the link, but it does make me wonder, this may sound stupid (well it wouldn't be the first time I did on here!) but what exactly is the difference between buying a small pillar drill and putting a compound table on it and buying a 'mill' with a compound table already on it?

[rvt]

.......The factory assembled price puts it at £300 incl postage, which is attractive, although I would still need some clamps and some cutting tools......

and, as a rough rule of thumb, tooling and workholding will swallow up at least as much again as the cost of the machine. Some kit, such as metrology, is usually equally applicable to various machines, but cutters & workholding are generally specific to either lathe or mill (there are of course exceptions e.g. if you do have a rotary table on the mill, it is very helpful to make it able to receive the chucks straight off the lathe so you don't loose centre).

Dave

Really? Do you think I'll be putting that much extra into it straight away though? I certainly hope now. I have the drill pieces. All I see I need is some clamps and a couple of cutting tools...

But this is where I come back to the Proxxon again, which I didn't think I would. The kit basically has everything that I would need already with it. And, it goes up to 20,000 RPM, which you suggest is important for smaller drill bits? Confusion!

[rvt]

RVT,
A couple of more points to ponder, What your projects are today may not nessisarily be what you want to work on next year or even 5 yrs. from now. This is another reason for the largest machine you can afford.

Whatever machine you buy I would strongly recommend getting one with a R-8 taper if possible. These are a industry standard and release from the spindle taper far easier. MT or morse tapers are also comman but are a self holding taper and require tapping on the spindle draw bar with a lot more force. That is not really good for the spindle bearings. Overall R-8 is usually easier to find and has a lot more tooling made for it. If you can't find it in a R-8 taper then you probably don't need it.

Pete

Thanks again Pete. I've somehow stumbled my way back to the Proxxon now though. Thing is, before I started 'fiddling' with camera lenses, I honestly had no interest or nothing to do with metal work in anyway. And since I've started adapting/modifying camera lenses, I haven't gained any interest in other areas of metal work. So, I think 'realistically', I'm not going to be venturing outside of the world of camera lenses when it comes to lathe and milling work any time in the near future. And I know that any of the mounts that I can work on aren't any larger than 65mm OD. You had my sold on getting one as large as I can before, but now I'm just not sure it's work the extra cost, which could come close to double by the looks of it...

[DMIOM]

.... Thanks for the link, but it does make me wonder, this may sound stupid (well it wouldn't be the first time I did on here!) but what exactly is the difference between buying a small pillar drill and putting a compound table on it and buying a 'mill' with a compound table already on it?

Pillar drills typically just have the three-spoked downfeed on the quill, a mill will have means of fine-feeding in the Z (vertical) direction.

Pillar drills (generally) aren't renowned for their axial accuracy, and especially with the quill extended, the runout can be horrendous. When drilling 'big' holes, that doesn't matter so much, as once the drill has started it is self-centring to some extent. Additionally, when drilling, the loading is in line with the drill axis, with a bit of rotational load; but when milling, you are often traversing sideways, so you are putting an off-axis load into the quill which can deflect even more - mills have their heads designed to accomodate an appropriate level of sideways loading without deflecting too much.

Mills, although they can be both dovetail and round columns, generally are sufficiently well constructed to hold the rated load and remain with all three axes orthogonal once they have been trammed - that could be harder with a compound table clamped to a drill table or base.

[HS93]

the mill frop Arc uro comes fully asembeled, but as all machines need a final set up, the chinnese benifit from a strip clean and a re assemble to get the best out of them, all seig are not equal, depends on the speck orderd I have been told
I fitted a belt drive to mine, gives a lot faster spindle speed, but I have also got one of these.

http://www.wolfgangengineering.com/Products.php

if you are only doing small items like lenses this may be a good buy, I have one for small stuff and it can be used as a mill with the optional table, still works out cheaper, by the way I am not ant Proxon as I have a few tools and have had one of there machines, problem was spares where so expensive

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Machines-Accessories/Milling-Machines/Model-X0-Micro-Mill

Peter

[rvt]

if you are only doing small items like lenses this may be a good buy, I have one for small stuff and it can be used as a mill with the optional table, still works out cheaper, by the way I am not ant Proxon as I have a few tools and have had one of there machines, problem was spares where so expensive

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Machines-Accessories/Milling-Machines/Model-X0-Micro-Mill

Peter

Thanks again Peter. I understand what you mean about expense. The only reason I'm probably drawn to the Proxxon is because I browse a catelogue and see lathes and large mills made by them costings thousands of pounds - a chance to buy something by them but at the fraction of the cost is attractive to primitive minds like mine .

But to the link you sent me. I'm right in thinking this is pretty much identical in size to the Proxxon I originally linked? Sounds interesting. I don't see any clamps for sale by them though, so I'm wondering if this Proxxon table for the MF70 would fit directly onto that micro mill?

Found this earlier too, the proxxon but at ~£215 shipped to the UK

Rich

[sportandmiah]

The proxxen appears to be a neat little machine, but I would stay away from the sieg models of the micro mill. I have the x1 and it is not suited to making small pieces easily. I have a Sherline lathe, and found it so smooth and accurate that I bought the milling column, part 3050. My sherline lathe with mill column is 1000 times better than my X1 micro mill...extremely smooth and precise. The proxxen looks to be a quality machine suited towards making small items. The sherline is similar, but has a ton of accessories; and can handle small items as well as larger materials.

[HS93]

The proxxen appears to be a neat little machine, but I would stay away from the sieg models of the micro mill. I have the x1 and it is not suited to making small pieces easily. I have a Sherline lathe, and found it so smooth and accurate that I bought the milling column, part 3050. My sherline lathe with mill column is 1000 times better than my X1 micro mill...extremely smooth and precise. The proxxen looks to be a quality machine suited towards making small items. The sherline is similar, but has a ton of accessories; and can handle small items as well as larger materials.

what do you call small items ?  I use a X1 for what I call small items without a problem.

Peter

[rvt]

The proxxen appears to be a neat little machine, but I would stay away from the sieg models of the micro mill. I have the x1 and it is not suited to making small pieces easily. I have a Sherline lathe, and found it so smooth and accurate that I bought the milling column, part 3050. My sherline lathe with mill column is 1000 times better than my X1 micro mill...extremely smooth and precise. The proxxen looks to be a quality machine suited towards making small items. The sherline is similar, but has a ton of accessories; and can handle small items as well as larger materials.

what do you call small items ?  I use a X1 for what I call small items without a problem.

Peter

I've got a couple of things up that require the odd drilling angle (as stated in the other thread) so went head and ordered the tiny X0 model you showed me with the slider and a clamping set. Thanks for all your help!