Well its finally come time to start up my own shop. Im planning on buying a trak k3 mill from southwestern industries. We have one at the shop i currently work at, its nice, very simple to use. Anyone have any opinions on a better cnc 2 or 3 axis knee mill? Thank you for your time reading this.




-josh

The Mori Seki is a good solid Mill with low maint. costs.

anyone else?

If I remember right the trak k3's are runnink around 20K. For that kind of money you could find a nice smaller enclosed vmc with a tool changer and a much faster spindle. I just saw a couple of nice Milltronics vm15s and 16s that were in very nice condition for under that price range. They would let you use flood coolant without drowning. I bought a 2 year old Sharp sv2412 for not much more than that and it is a big step up from my old bridgeport cnc knee mill. If it was me I would look for a used vmc.

Buy as much as you can afford!!!!!!!! If you go cheap now you will regret it later!!!!!!

big mak has it wrong :) . Buy more than you can afford! Get an enclosed VMC with full three axes.

The Proto Trak is a great machine.
however
If you are looking to be effecient at making parts with CNC my minimum requirements are:
- Full enclosure
- ATC
- Rigid tap (unless you will never tap a hole).

Dodging chips and coolant sucks, so does cleaning up the mess on the floor.

You can get new, small VMC's starting at around $40k.
You can get decent used machines within your budget.

Listen to big mak, Geof, & DareBee. They know what they are talking about. In the long run a quality machine is worth it's weight in gold. I'd recommend Mori Seiki, Okuma, or Mazak; I rarely service these machines. They are expensive, but well worth the investment.:cool:

As for the Milltronics recommendation, you might want to see my posts:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27542

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=345069