any of you use a mill? for what?

S

SkaerE

Joined
Sep 9, 2001
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i picked up what i believe is a Taig mini mill the other day from a fella on craigslist.

honestly, i hadn't been looking for one really - but the price was too good to pass on.

so, i have a new mill and no tooling other than a 3/8'' endmill. was going to order a couple items and thought i might toss the question to the crowd.

what do you use your mill for and what tooling sees the most use?

so far i have,

endmills of a couple sizes - various reasons, some related to knife making...slotting guards etc
fly cutter for flattening scales
center drill to start holes exactly where i want them to end up ;)
set of collets
perhaps an adapter and a good chuck
probably a better vise than the little thumb screw dealy it came with...

input?

thanks!
 
I have a mini mill. Don't expect it to be a hard use machine....Don't get me wrong...for making guard slots it is nice, but it lacks power and capability for some of the larger stuff. is yours a collet or chuck? Mine is a chuck, and it sucks to be honest. you have what sounds to be decent tooling, a 1/8" end mill is probably the most used tool in my arsenal. I would like to get a fly cutter....With a Palmgren 4" tilt vice on my mill....A 3/8 drill bit barely clears the vice.I would suggest, if using it to drill...buy stubby drill bits. oh and lastly....go slow, it will jump on you if you try to hog with it. I have had it rip pieces of brass out of my vice, shredding them in the process.
 
there's books availabe teaching how to work with a mill.
That might give you some good imput
 
Ive got a bench mill that uses er40 collets. I have used it to hog out the initial flat grind for a few knives. I use a tilting vice and set the angle at 2.5 degrees for a 1" grind. You also need a support for the point of the blade or it will vibrate. This method has saved me alot in belts. My mill is 300kg though, a mini mill may work if you try it use a small cutter and keep the speed high.
I bought a book when I got my mill and watched a couple of dvds off the arrr bay.
 
I have a Sherline 5400 that has seen lots of guard slotting in the past 7 or 8 years. That is about all I use it for, but it does a pretty good job on guards.

With a mini-mill, you have to think of mini-projects. Nowhere close to being accurate enough for most projects, but if you go slow with sharp end-mills, it does great on guards.

Robert
 
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