On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 14:13:52 -0500, "John"
wrote:

Does anyone have any experience with the HF Mill #33686-4VGA? Thanks..John

Had one similar, ran it for almost ten years without major problems.
BIggest drawback with any mill drill and round column, if you can't
get a balance in your tooling, you're going to do a lot of indicating
to get things on center after raising/lowering the head. Another
poster queried the spindle/table minimum, I don't remember it ever
causing any problem, but there were times I wished the maximum was
more.

The HF is identical to the one I had, including the cheesy handwheels,
I made new ones, even that not a problem. I also added thrust
bearings to both ends of the longitudinal lead screw, made it a lot
nicer to operate. The thrust bearing retainer for the find downfeed
is plastic, but it was seven years before I had to make one out of
metal to replace it.

Mill vise is important, a 4" works about perfectly for the size of the
machine. The machine has more power than you can use, one horse would
be perfectly adequate. Tuned up and deburred, it's quite capable of
doing respectable work, but this ain't no Milwaukee vertical.
Sometimes lighter cuts than you really want to take are called for.
Making sure the column is square with the table is also a must, if it
ain't, put shims in until it is.

Rich