3 in 1 any good?

[James04]

HarborFreight and Grizzly both have 3in1 manchines for around $700. Are they any good for someone looking to make R/C heli parts, gaser conversion parts (prop adapters,triming flywheels), and possibly an IC engine in the future? Can they be setup with CNC? Am I better off with the seperate Mill and Lathe for around $500 each?

Thanks for the advise
James

[CNCadmin]

I think the throw are to small and I think they would be hard to convert to CNC.

[HuFlungDung]

Multipurpose machines suck if for no other reason, than they are not handy to switch around. You'll find as you work, that you can get really annoyed having to switch the machine over (and lose your setups). Hell, I get annoyed just having to shift gears

[James04]

Thanks,

Im going with seperates (Homier). All I can aford. Hope they work out for me. I'll be recieving the lathe on tuesday and if I like the quality I'll get the mill as soon as I get the rest of the cash up. Looks like I'll have to due a few more side jobs!

James

[WOODKNACK]

I have the homier speedway minimill. Works just fine. Took me a little while to clean it and adjust everything. After that I was golden.

[Klox]

i'm backing Hu up on this one. It is better to have seperate machines for milling and turning. Especially if you have to mill then turn and mill(drill) again for example. You get so frustrated setting up breaking down, setting up again that you will soon get mad at yourself.....


Klox

[lstool]

Yup,
I woulden't touch those combo machines with a 10 foot pole.
Nuthin like a nice Bridgeport. I don't know if any one here has done this before but before I got my CNC lathe I have used my CNC Bridgeport as a CNC lathe many times.

1) Once you can chuck your work in your spindle (via. fixture or custom made chuck for your spindle, R8 in my case) your on your way.

2) You can make a nice fixture to hold gang tools 4 or 5 tools or more if necessary even drilling & boring

3) Now it gets a little tricky (you are programing radious not diameter) you have to fool the machine in the way you program to turn your parts.

4) (remember you cannot do this if you cannot programe your spindle) now to keep the machine from going home for a tool change (and we are not changing tools we are moving over to a new too, also we cant forget about those dreaded tool offsets when you are using a few tools) you wright down the offsets and position to that offset for that tool in absolute (add .100 for clearance) and programe in incramental.

There you have it turned your CNC mill to a CNC lathe this is only worth while if you are making alot of parts and you dont have a CNC lathe on hand, Or as in my situation at the time Your CNC lathe had not yet arrived and you had to get the job done one way or another (but definately not manualy) or perfect for contouring. so for all you guys building a home CNC mill concider keeping that spindle as hefty as possible you may want to turn some nice parts.
Happy Machining