Been looking at this mill...

[John Conroy]

It Looks similar to my previous mill, a Precision Matthews PM932 which is also an RF45 clone. There are quite a few different Chinese vendors and quality varies from very good to pretty bad. It is certainly worth looking at and would be a good deal if it's a well built version. It's a pretty reasonable price, personally I would convert it all back to manual use and sell all the cnc conversion stuff but that's just my opinion. Looks like he might deliver it too!

I think its roughly the same as this Grizzly machine.
http://www.grizzly.com/products/Heavy-Duty-Mill-Drill-with-Stand-and-Power-Feed/G0755

 

[PeterT]

Depending on what you feel like tackling...
- the ad says '8 years old' , 'unused' & 'could be restored to original if desired' So that's all good from a lack of wear & hopefully pre-inspection standpoint. But I'd feel better about knowing about parts or lack thereof in advance. Even though the mills generically look the same from across the room, there well could be differences. Maybe check the forums as he suggests. I've read about some RF-45 conversions, maybe a bit more involved where they turfed the gearbox & went VFD. Those guys are not afraid of tearing down machines & modding. Even then, some of the parts like electrics, seals, gears, bearings have stumped them here & there.
- says 'original wiring removed'. I think you'd want to look at carefully.
- not clear if ball screws already retrofitted, my understanding is you cant use these in manual mill mode. Fine if its simple enough to swap stock lead screw assembly back in, but something else to confirm if end housings have been modded like to accommodate cnc motor mounts etc.
- I know diddly about the cnc parts in terms of what those are worth

So in its current state its not quite a plug-n-play manual mill either. He is only 600$ under what John sold his PM mill for. And that was a cherry clean machine with power feed & other perks. (Thought real hard about that opportunity but this economy has cooled my check book :/

 

[John Conroy]

Hey Chris, I noticed that his vendor on Kijiji shows he sells the Zay brand of mills. The picture in the ad shows the same Zay7045 model. Maybe you could give him a call.

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-other-heavy-...ut/1144374356?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

 

[Chris Roy]

thanks guys

 

[PeterT]

Coincidentally I just grabbed a Home Shop Machinist mag & noticed this ad. Anybody herd of them? Apparently they used to be IH.
http://charteroakautomation.com/our-products/manual-bed-mill/
The same US$ party killer theme. Interestingly they have some add-on features to the base manual mill particularly the VFD drive. I always thought a VFD RF-45 would be a nice stock configuration but I have no direct experience with VFDs. I wont say my King is a real quiet machine but I've been told 80% of noise source is not the gear box, its in the sliding spline assembly.

 

[John Conroy]

There are a few guys using Charter Oak stuff over on the Hobby Machinist forum. My impression is they are just another Chinese machine and quality is decent and warranty support is pretty good. I would buy anther PM machine from Matt at Precision Machine in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the dollar being in the toilet. His products are as good as anybody's and his warranty support is the best in the business. He also ships to Canada for reasonable rates. If our dollar ever recovers I may still order a new mill from him.

I'm using a VFD on my Ferro mill. With a 3 phase motor it's the best way to allow it to be used with household 240 volt single phase power. They are very versatile and user options are endless. I really like the ability to ramp the motor up to speed rather than just turning it on at full speed. It also give you the ability to vary motor speed with the turn of a dial. It works so well that I'm going to convert my lathe to am3 phase motor and VFD set up some day.

 

[PeterT]

I think you are right about PM. If you put your thumb over the "$" sign, he seems to be doing a good job trying to hi-grade the product at factory source & at least making an effort to ship machines to the Land of Beaver, which is a lot more than I can say for so many USA vendors who just cant be bothered. And I don't think its an easy business to begin with. You hear this same theme many times, just when a good product & price is established, things 'change' overseas & dealers are back-peddling & wrestling with shortcuts & defects they have little to no control over. Back in the 80' 90's Jet used to be a good line through some select dealers & they were reputably decent Taiwan machines. I've lost track but I think that line & distributers have changed since.

Look forward to your VFD lathe conversion, John.

Sorry for side-departure...back to mills.

 

[kylemp]

Depending on what you feel like tackling...
- the ad says '8 years old' , 'unused' & 'could be restored to original if desired' So that's all good from a lack of wear & hopefully pre-inspection standpoint. But I'd feel better about knowing about parts or lack thereof in advance. Even though the mills generically look the same from across the room, there well could be differences. Maybe check the forums as he suggests. I've read about some RF-45 conversions, maybe a bit more involved where they turfed the gearbox & went VFD. Those guys are not afraid of tearing down machines & modding. Even then, some of the parts like electrics, seals, gears, bearings have stumped them here & there.
- says 'original wiring removed'. I think you'd want to look at carefully.
- not clear if ball screws already retrofitted, my understanding is you cant use these in manual mill mode. Fine if its simple enough to swap stock lead screw assembly back in, but something else to confirm if end housings have been modded like to accommodate cnc motor mounts etc.
- I know diddly about the cnc parts in terms of what those are worth

So in its current state its not quite a plug-n-play manual mill either. He is only 600$ under what John sold his PM mill for. And that was a cherry clean machine with power feed & other perks. (Thought real hard about that opportunity but this economy has cooled my check book :/

I actually picked that mill up (unintended, just want to have a look and couldn't say no with what he had). It's your generic RF45 clone, the nice part about those mills is the dovetailed Z axis, I think the total stroke on the Z is more than the Y.

In the instance of that machine, he had (I guess I can say we have, now) all the drivers, motors, ballscrews and nuts, etc. which to me is a huge plus. The big thing I was concerned about originally was the taper of the spindle. Many of those machines are MT3 I believe, which seems stupid to me.. but that one is R8. Apparently industrial hobbies (now out of business but I believe it is now Charter Oak Automation) sells a NT30 taper spindle upgrade, just checked their website and the spindle is $325(USD).

Honestly, it really wouldn't have been a good beginner project in my opinion. The ballscrews are 2m lengths, and with the original wiring stripped off it would have taken some work just to get it back to a manual mill if you needed that to do the conversion. I don't think I would have went for it if I didn't already have the machine tools sitting to complete the project just because it would have been quite difficult to do, or I would have been trying to find someone else to either do the turning and milling or let me do those things on their machines.

I've been reading a bunch about other people's conversions to CNC, there are some really nice setups out there which gives me a lot of hope.. but you can see where a lot of people start to spend a lot more money. After it is together (hopefully it won't take too long to get running) there will be the usual upgrades waiting to happen - VFD and bigger motor, spindle bearing upgrade to get the spindle RPM up to the 8k or so range, either a TTS style tooling upgrade or a new spindle and ATC, etc.

When we get to building it I'll try and take lots of pictures of the process and the plan, and post the complete build.

 

[Chris Roy]

I actually picked that mill up (unintended, just want to have a look and couldn't say no with what he had). It's your generic RF45 clone, the nice part about those mills is the dovetailed Z axis, I think the total stroke on the Z is more than the Y.

In the instance of that machine, he had (I guess I can say we have, now) all the drivers, motors, ballscrews and nuts, etc. which to me is a huge plus. The big thing I was concerned about originally was the taper of the spindle. Many of those machines are MT3 I believe, which seems stupid to me.. but that one is R8. Apparently industrial hobbies (now out of business but I believe it is now Charter Oak Automation) sells a NT30 taper spindle upgrade, just checked their website and the spindle is $325(USD).

Honestly, it really wouldn't have been a good beginner project in my opinion. The ballscrews are 2m lengths, and with the original wiring stripped off it would have taken some work just to get it back to a manual mill if you needed that to do the conversion. I don't think I would have went for it if I didn't already have the machine tools sitting to complete the project just because it would have been quite difficult to do, or I would have been trying to find someone else to either do the turning and milling or let me do those things on their machines.

I've been reading a bunch about other people's conversions to CNC, there are some really nice setups out there which gives me a lot of hope.. but you can see where a lot of people start to spend a lot more money. After it is together (hopefully it won't take too long to get running) there will be the usual upgrades waiting to happen - VFD and bigger motor, spindle bearing upgrade to get the spindle RPM up to the 8k or so range, either a TTS style tooling upgrade or a new spindle and ATC, etc.

When we get to building it I'll try and take lots of pictures of the process and the plan, and post the complete build.

Can't wait to see it