You know this post is funny, at sixteen I was working in a machine shop and I wanted nothing to do with it then again I was sweeping the floor. The machines in that shop went so low that you could have gotten 3 or 4 of the small x1's. And they were nice too, old K&T(kearny and Trucker) and bridgeports. At any rate I digress.
First off, I would ask your mom and dad if they are going to let you have it and make them realize there will be chips from it. So if you garage is coinhabited by a moms vehicle you may need to be on the same page as her, as I know my wife would probably make me and or my son move out.
Second, you should know how the machine operates properly, I assume that you can take industrial shop classes at your school, it would be wise to be inrolled in those if not already, there are alot of little things that you need to know over and above just buying the mill.
Grizzly does not make any machines they are strictly a resaler who rebrands other peoples equipment the majority coming from china.(although I don't know about alot of the woodworking equipment). And yes for the most part the equipment is fine, the Sieg made items seem to be of better value then some of the others who include jet and rong fu amongst many others. They have excellent service and carry many parts in stock.
The Sieg X2 (grizzly 8689) is sold by many other companies(Harbor Frieght, Micro Mark, Cummins, Homier) so you should do your homework before you buy it, you may save your self some money. Also don't forget to add the shipping into the total price or that might bite you in the rear. If you have a harbor freight store near by they will more then likely carry it and you can save yourself on freight. This machine has been succesfully turned into
cnc by many people. If you look at
CNC fusion they sell a kit with ballscrews which improves the normal preformace besides adding
cnc(you still have to buy motors, and controls). I recommend that you do alot research before you go and buy anything, there are pricey out of the box kits which only require a computer but they are expensive and out of your stated price range. You should also consider that turning that machine into a
cnc will run around $1500 more if you buy some of the available kits. I was in a thread the other day that was quoting $550(cncfusion) and $475(xylotex) for conversion and stepper and controls if memory serves. The only draw back is that this machine runs a spindle taper of MT#3 and thats really minor. There are tons of mods and tooling for these machines and I would say is an a very good starter that will hold its resale value well.
Other companies that make or more properly sells mills( in reality that are not any producers in your price range in the states anymore.) are industrail hobbies(which is considerably larger) and little over 2 grand depending upon shipping zone. Its a big machine and its well suited to larger parts in one of their pictures they show a small block chevy on the mill. A company called lathemasters sells the zay series of mill, which are also larger. The Sieg x3 is also sold by grizzly(g0463) harbor freight and cummins is also an excellent mill for its price, and is the bigger brother of the X2.
The other mill you were asking about I know nothing about save that its a round column mill. These are not very easy to convert to
CNC, and they don't in my opinion cut as nice as square or dovetail column mills because the head can spin while cutting. I use a rong fu 30 at work and its a piece of crap compared to some of the same sized sqaure column mills mainly because if you take a heavy cut the mill swings sideways. They are very good drill presses, there side milling abilty is less then par however.
As for what software you will need mastercam is the first and second steps of the
cnc process, you will need the third as well as the hardware. The third being the machine code translator, I would only recomend mach 2 by artsoft. The sequence of events goes like this,
You have the idea, you draw the idea in
CAD, after you are done drawing it you transfer it to
CAM, were the machine code is generated(G-code) which is then downloaded to the computer and run by the machine code operator (mach 2) which runs the mill and you produce the part. You can also just use the Mach 2 to run the machine by manually creating a program or jogging the mill, its alot to learn but if you have good computer skills it should not be to hard. A good understanding of X,Y,Z planes as used in algerbra helps and some of the terms used are the same like relative and absoulte.
If you build this unit into
CNC you need to have a firm understanding of electrical and mechanincal controls also, its not hard but you should understand that this is not like working with a cars electronics, one wrong wire and you could fry several hundred dollards worth of drivers, or worse you. Also you or someone else can get hurt very easily while these machines are running.
The other thing you need to take into consideration is that you need to buy other things, like tooling, collets, vises, clamp downs, measure equipement, and of course material to make chips with.
In the end if I know what I know now, i would have started at 16, so go for it and there are never any dumb questions, only ones asked too late!
chris
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Originally Posted by SupermotoAbuser 
