milling machine start-up costs?

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say a feller wanted to treat himself to one of those harbor freight mini-mills...how much would he expect to pay to get up and running, above and beyond the cost of the milling machine? i mean how much should i expect to have to budget for getting enough basic bits and cutters and tools and vises, etc. before i could actually put this thing to good use?

i know it depends on exactly what a feller wants to do with his milling machine, but gimme a ball park, general figure...i don't want to spend $400 on a milling machine only to discover that i need another $400 before i can do anything with it...

thanks in advance...
 
yeah yeah yeah me too! got my taxes back yesterdayand it's time for a mini-mill(: What else will I need for to do some basic machining?
 
I spent about 20 bucks on ebay for ten 1/8" end mill bits, and 20 or so more at MSC for a couple of step clamps to hold down the pieces I work on.....all I use it for is slotting guards & it works great....more difficult machine work will require different cutters, but they're not too expensive.....your costs will depend upon what you want to accomplish with the machine.....
 
I have heard more than one person say that you can figure on spending as much or more than the machine on tooling and that is probably true in the long term. Most of those machines seem to come with a drill chuck, so you would need a vice and probably some collets. Hopefully some one with more knowledge than I have will speak up but I think you will want to use collets to hold your end mills and cutters. The end mills and cutters will depend on what you are working on. Check for a machinery dealer in your area a lot of them will have used stuff so you may be able to pick up a small vice and other odds a little cheaper, but I'd avoid used cutting tools unless they resharpen and packaged them.
A few sources to get started:
Travers Tool Co. www.travers.com I have never dealt with them but we get their catalog at work and they send out monthly sales fliers to customers.
DoAll Inc. www.doall.com DoAll seems to have stores in a lot of towns, I have bought a few things from them. Their local store doesn't have everything in the catalog but, has quite a bit of used stuff.
Enco www.use-enco.com They send out an e-mail sale flier monthly
MSC www.mscdirect.com I have buy quite a bit from MSC, fast shipping and I seem to get at least 2 sales fliers a month one for metal working and one for MRO supplies.
Rutland Tool www.rutlandtool.com I have bought a lot of stuff from them over the years with no problems, most orders are shipped the day they are received and within reason (I don?t think they do this for really heavy orders) are shipped UPS blue for the UPS ground rate.
Micro-Mark www.micromark.com Sort of a model makers catalog but they have lots of stuff for the small lathe and milling machine including kits to convert them to true inch feed screws and hand wheels.
I don't get anything from any of these companies for the plug; I am either a happy customer or have noticed they offer something that may be useful in this case.

http://www.mini-lathe.com and http://www.cartertools.com Both have a lot of information on use and modifications to make the small lathe and mills perform better and a ton of links, it should keep you busy for a few hours.

Todd
 
Todd's reply was as thorough as any you'll get, so I will only add that I buy most of my stuff from Travers on sale or on eBay. The things I've bought are clamping kit (had to buy a bunch of carriage bolts to fit the smaller slots of my mill but all the other stuff in the larger kits that go on sale works okay), parallels (how the hell do you spell that!?), 1-2-3 blocks. And for grins I bought a set of machinist's squares from Travers for $50 on sale. They are cool but the handy old woodworker's sliding square is just as useful for our purposes. Travers is great to work with, hold out for sales on what you want. Their big catalog is a drooling treat though. :D

Edited to add: Should have said, all the stuff I got that I needed probably cost $150.

Dave
 
I bought the Grizzly mini-mill over a year ago. The machine was the least of my expense. Most of your money will go into tooling. You will want things: a rotary table, variuos vises, dove tail cutters, half round cutters, all sizes possible of end mills, a nice ball bearing chuck, you will need parallels, depth gauges, spacer blocks, etc., etc,: it goes on and on for several months.

It is worth every penny and you can tool up gradually as you see fit.

Roger
 
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