is anyone familiar with the harbour frieght 3in1 machine?
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=44142
I am wondering if it is worth the money and is acurate at all?
or would I be better off buying a seperate mini mill and lathe?

From what I have been told, the 3 in ones do everything, but not any one thing very well. Plus you will hate switching from mill to lathe and back all the time. A lot of time is spent in setup, and it's no fun to have to switch back and forth and have to do you setup over and over.

I am thinking that having seperate machines is the way to go (and it's the way I went)

But, I don't own one, so don't take my word for it.

Eric

I bet that for tha tprice you could get both machines and some tooling(depending on the machine I guess).

The one thing I like about the extend cross slide is that you can throw a couple tool posts on for a cnc application without having to change tools.

Jon

I have been looking at the same type of machine. I am going to use it in my garage to work on my old VW's. I would not put any junk from harbor frieght in my garage let alone my shop. We have even had to rework grinders from them to get them to work correctly. I am looking at the "smithy" machine that is the same format as the one your looking at. I don't care about setup time as mine will be for hobby. It also takes up alot less floor space than two machines. The smithy line of machines even has their machine setup for cnc. And the granite line has brackets for survos, so if you want to retrofit it to cnc then its ready to go.

cncwhiz is there a web site for the 'smithy' machine? I am located in canada and would prefere to deal local to avoid $$$ shipping

I went to busy bee today and looked at the 1 hp mill, like the one balsaman is cnc'ing
it is nice, how does everyone lug these thing home at 450 lbs! I assume one would have to take it apart before bringing it into the basement....yikes

trubleshtr,
I don't know about the Canada shipping thing. Here is the web site for smithy. They sell woodworking and metal working machines as well. Go to the site and check metal working tab. I am looking at the granite line, the quality is in that line. If you really want to go crazy they have a link to get a cnc retro fit setup for the machines.

www.smithy.com