Micro mill question.

jdm61

jdm61

itinerant metal pounder
Joined
Aug 12, 2005
Messages
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I "inherited" a Taig micro mill a year or so ago when my uncle passed away, but haven't picked it up from my cousin in Ohio yet. Is such a machine sufficiently accurate and burly for lightweight work like boring holes in folder liners and the occasional handle 1018 or annealed damascus handle frame? How about "cleaning up" guard slots to their final size? I have a Harbor Freight style mill-drill, but it is the one that has the Jacobs chuck.......can you say innacurate?;)
 
i have a taig.. and all its used for is slotting guards in wrought iron, mild, brass.. it does it very well
- get a screwless vise ... the taig vise is worthless for milling
- and get small carbide endmills.. i like the micro 100 stuff... biggest mistake people make is slapping a big end mill like 1/4 and start hogging like on a bridgeport ( duh !!!! ) ... if you scale down to small end mills like 1/8 and smaller, you'll find the taig is quite good at eating steel

just tram it and you'll have a nice machine....

good luck

Greg

whoops.. i almost forgot... i alway use collets with the taig... the jacob is ok for drilling, if you use the set up with the draw bar.... ( i see they stopped making that set up for some stupid reason )
- i wouldn't use it for endmills... too sloppy
 
Joe,

I did a little searching for info on your HF mini-mill.

I don't have that machine and I'm not a machinist, LOL, BUT It looks to me that your machine IS an R8 spindle with a Jacobs taper in it and has a drawbar under the cover on top of the machine.

If this is the case I would think you can remove the cover, loosen the drawbar to remove the R8 to Jacobs taper and then use your standard R8 collets for milling just like the big boys do. If you need to drill tiny or off sized holes that won't fit your collets you could pop the drill chuck back in for those operations.

I'm suspecting this is the case and if so I'd sell the taig and get tooled up for your HF and be golden.

You might want to drop John White a PM and ask him about it as I'm sure he has (or had) a HF mini just like you've got.

Take care buddy, Josh

Just to clarify- I think this is what your drill chuck is attached to and installed in your mill-
http://www.grizzly.com/products/Drill-Chuck-Arbor-R8-JT3/SB1465

And if so you should be good to use R8 tooling once you figure out the drawbar
 
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