On Sat, 17 Dec, wrote:
Since there are no places near me that sell used machines of the type I
need, it looks as though I'll have to gamble on ordering something new
over the internet.

At the most extreme, I'll need to be able to drill 1-1/2" holes through
1/4" thick stainless steel, space and weight are a big issue, to the
best of my abilities I've narrowed the choices down to a Grizzly G7943
drill press and a Mini Mill/Drill(if I can find a suitable one).

Since I'll need to make parts of various shapes and sizes I thought
that a mill/drill might be a plausible option. But I've discovered that
there may be books that show how to do milling on a drill press with
the proper jigs and attachments, so I may just stick with that idea.

Is there anyone here that has had a lot of experience with using a
drill press as a milling machine? If so, advice would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

I'd suggest using the Google Groups search:

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en

Punch in this group and then probably "drill mill/drill" or something
similar. There have been a ton of threads on this topic here already.

To summarize, if you plan to mill at all, get a mill/drill. I've only been
on this group a short while, but I've seen several threads already on this
topic and nobody has had anything good to say about using a drill press as
a mill. They just aren't made for the lateral loads you'll see.

If you're interested in mini-mills, you may want to check out the info
available at:

http://www.mini-lathe.com

(Yes, I know it says lathe, but the popular mini-lathe is made by the same
company that makes a popular mini-mill and there is info on both there.
There are also several Yahoo! groups specifically for those
machines..."minimill" and "GrizHFMinimill" are two of them for the small
mills.)


--Donnie

--
Donnie Barnes http://www.donniebarnes.com 879. V.