I have seen many threads in which people argue about the merits of
Mill-Drills as Milling machines, but I don't want to talk about that.

I have a medium drill press, a 20 year old Enco machine, with chaning
belt type speed control, RPM 240-3800 RPM, mounted on a bench. It is
2MT, but I only use the regular drill chuck, goes up to 5/8 inch. The
table cranks up and down fairly easily, and when I need to I can adjust
the angle of the table. I do not have an XY table. It is a bench top model.

I don't have space for a drill and a mill, so if I get a mill-drill I
would sell the drill. I would probably go for a lower end mill-drill. I
have no machining experience.

So what would I give up if I upgraded from my drill press to a
mill-drill? Or would I just have a better drill press with some milling
capability?

Richard

--
http://www.fergusonsculpture.com
Sculptures in copper and other metals

It depends a great deal on what you drill on your drill. A mill drill
usually is a heavier duty drill and has capacity for better feed and
precision but it's drawback over a floor drill is what can be drilled as far
as size of material. You have much less height adjustment on a mill drill.
Dick
--
Richard H. Neighbors
Building and repairing fine billiard cues for real pool players at
affordable prices.
Over 35 years exp. Located in Cincinnati OH
ph.# 513 233-7499
e-mail
web site http://www.dickiecues.com
"Richard Ferguson" wrote in message
...
I have seen many threads in which people argue about the merits of
Mill-Drills as Milling machines, but I don't want to talk about that.

I have a medium drill press, a 20 year old Enco machine, with chaning belt
type speed control, RPM 240-3800 RPM, mounted on a bench. It is 2MT, but I
only use the regular drill chuck, goes up to 5/8 inch. The table cranks
up and down fairly easily, and when I need to I can adjust the angle of
the table. I do not have an XY table. It is a bench top model.

I don't have space for a drill and a mill, so if I get a mill-drill I
would sell the drill. I would probably go for a lower end mill-drill. I
have no machining experience.

So what would I give up if I upgraded from my drill press to a mill-drill?
Or would I just have a better drill press with some milling capability?

Richard

--
http://www.fergusonsculpture.com
Sculptures in copper and other metals

Richard Ferguson wrote:
I have seen many threads in which people argue about the merits of
Mill-Drills as Milling machines, but I don't want to talk about that.

I have a medium drill press, a 20 year old Enco machine, with chaning
belt type speed control, RPM 240-3800 RPM, mounted on a bench. It is
2MT, but I only use the regular drill chuck, goes up to 5/8 inch. The
table cranks up and down fairly easily, and when I need to I can adjust
the angle of the table. I do not have an XY table. It is a bench top model.

I don't have space for a drill and a mill, so if I get a mill-drill I
would sell the drill. I would probably go for a lower end mill-drill. I
have no machining experience.

So what would I give up if I upgraded from my drill press to a
mill-drill? Or would I just have a better drill press with some milling
capability?

Probably the biggest thing you'd give up is
not being able to drill a hole without taking
down a setup on the mill.

I have a small knee mill and a tiny bench
drill press. I use the mill a lot for drilling
just because I have more clamping options and
stuff that requires lots of rigidity like
countersinking works better. Likewise, on
the mill I can do a setup to drill a couple
of holes in 50 pieces of work very quickly.

The only downside of using the mill is that
the quill is not quite as sensitive as a
drill press and I tend to be much more
careful about not dinging the table.

Richard Ferguson wrote:
I have seen many threads in which people argue about the merits of
Mill-Drills as Milling machines, but I don't want to talk about that.

I have a medium drill press, a 20 year old Enco machine, with chaning
belt type speed control, RPM 240-3800 RPM, mounted on a bench. It is
2MT, but I only use the regular drill chuck, goes up to 5/8 inch. The
table cranks up and down fairly easily, and when I need to I can adjust
the angle of the table. I do not have an XY table. It is a bench top model.

I don't have space for a drill and a mill, so if I get a mill-drill I
would sell the drill. I would probably go for a lower end mill-drill. I
have no machining experience.

So what would I give up if I upgraded from my drill press to a
mill-drill? Or would I just have a better drill press with some milling
capability?

The single biggest thing you'd miss is the hole in the drill press table. There
isn't one on a mill, so you have to always be using parallels or sheets of
sacrificial material or some other way to keep from drilling into your table.

The second thing you'd give up is portability. Plan to move soon? Do you
rearrange your shop a lot? Your drill press can probably be picked up easily,
maybe with one hand, but the mill requires an engine hoist.

GWE

What others said about size of possible parts but add one thing: A
Mill/Drill is rigid enough that you can use an end mill to redrill an of
center hole, spot a hole where it doesn't want to be, use a carbide
drill to drill through a broken tap, etc. Great for fixing many of your
'oops!'

Richard Ferguson wrote:
I have seen many threads in which people argue about the merits of
Mill-Drills as Milling machines, but I don't want to talk about that.

I have a medium drill press, a 20 year old Enco machine, with chaning
belt type speed control, RPM 240-3800 RPM, mounted on a bench. It is
2MT, but I only use the regular drill chuck, goes up to 5/8 inch. The
table cranks up and down fairly easily, and when I need to I can adjust
the angle of the table. I do not have an XY table. It is a bench top model.

I don't have space for a drill and a mill, so if I get a mill-drill I
would sell the drill. I would probably go for a lower end mill-drill. I
have no machining experience.

So what would I give up if I upgraded from my drill press to a
mill-drill? Or would I just have a better drill press with some milling
capability?

Richard

Jim Stewart wrote:

Probably the biggest thing you'd give up is
not being able to drill a hole without taking
down a setup on the mill.

This is really an argument against selling the drill!
Setup often costs much more time than the operation itself.


Nick
--
Motor Modelle // Engine Models
http://www.motor-manufaktur.de
DIY-DRO - YADRO - Eigenbau-Digitalanzeige

Richard,

I have seen many threads in which people argue about the merits of
Mill-Drills as Milling machines, but I don't want to talk about that.

With respect, I think you need to think carefully about that, otherwise,
there isn't much reason to make the move. The exception would be if you
plan only to drill holes in parts that already have clean edges. In
that case, an X-Y table might be all you need; I will leave that for
others to comment.


I have a medium drill press, a 20 year old Enco machine, with chaning
belt type speed control, RPM 240-3800 RPM, mounted on a bench. It is
2MT, but I only use the regular drill chuck, goes up to 5/8 inch. The
table cranks up and down fairly easily, and when I need to I can adjust
the angle of the table. I do not have an XY table. It is a bench top model.

I don't have space for a drill and a mill, so if I get a mill-drill I
would sell the drill. I would probably go for a lower end mill-drill. I
have no machining experience.

There's always room for another machine Ok, maybe not.


So what would I give up if I upgraded from my drill press to a
mill-drill? Or would I just have a better drill press with some milling
capability?


The comment about needing an engine hoist to lift a mill-drill is well
taken. Turin makes a no-frills hoist w/ folding legs that sells for
$140 or so. You can spend a LOT more, but if you don't care about
having power strokes in both directions on the lever, air assist, etc.,
you can save a lot of money.

I recently bought a mill-drill (essentially a Rong Fu 31) and am
thrilled with it. Read the recent "care and feeding" thread on this
group to get some good advice from the experts. One thing that I did
not get up front, largely because I posted to this group only after
having purchased the machine, was that a dovetailed column might be an
option. Investigate which machines offer it, how much they cost and
weigh, and ask people who own them whether or not they stack up against
knee mills[*] for alignment.

You probably already know that mill-drills, at least those w/ circular
columns, have a problem with alignment after moving the head. I ended
up buying an ER collet set, and find that it puts the endmills and drill
bits at about the same working height, and the ER collets indeed change
in a lot less vertical space than R8 shanks, so my 5 inch spindle travel
looks fairly generous at this point. With many types of work being held
in a vice on parallels, it is not hard to find a height that works most
of the time. Yes, the spindle is often extended a little more than one
might like, but the machine appears to be built for it.

Also note that if you lock your dials to a reference, you can likely
move the table far enough to get the work out of the way for changing
from a collet chuck to a "normal" chuck for times that this is
necessary. Thanks to the dials, you will be able to return to
previously visited spots with very good precision. Things change if you
find that you need to move the head. If you work on large parts, you
might need to move to a hole for the change, or will be out of luck.

If you attempt to match R8 collet held endmills with chuck held bits,
you will probably have trouble.

FWIW, I design and build prototype hardware. Precision usually
coincides with small parts, and I keep my machines (and my ability to
use them!) in mind as I work. If you do not have that freedom, then you
might find a mill-drill to be a waste of space.

Good luck!

Bill

[*] there really is not substitute, but I do not want a 2500+ lb machine
right now.

This may sound strange, but I have a Mill-Drill which is MT3. I also have a
new 10 x 44 verticle with power feed and DRO in all directions as well as a
medium size horizontal with an ISO 40 taper spindle. I use the mill-drill
the most, the horizontal next and the verticle the least. I have complete
tooling for all. I use the mill-drill for drilling mostly, but it works very
well for simple vertical milling applications. It is the easiest of all to
set up. It is much stiffer than a normal drill press and sits in the same
space as a drill press. It might be Chinese, but I wouldn't be without one.
Steve

"Richard Ferguson" wrote in message
...
I have seen many threads in which people argue about the merits of
Mill-Drills as Milling machines, but I don't want to talk about that.

I have a medium drill press, a 20 year old Enco machine, with chaning belt
type speed control, RPM 240-3800 RPM, mounted on a bench. It is 2MT, but I
only use the regular drill chuck, goes up to 5/8 inch. The table cranks
up and down fairly easily, and when I need to I can adjust the angle of
the table. I do not have an XY table. It is a bench top model.

I don't have space for a drill and a mill, so if I get a mill-drill I
would sell the drill. I would probably go for a lower end mill-drill. I
have no machining experience.

So what would I give up if I upgraded from my drill press to a mill-drill?
Or would I just have a better drill press with some milling capability?

Richard

--
http://www.fergusonsculpture.com
Sculptures in copper and other metals

Nick Müller wrote:
Jim Stewart wrote:


Probably the biggest thing you'd give up is
not being able to drill a hole without taking
down a setup on the mill.


This is really an argument against selling the drill!
Setup often costs much more time than the operation itself.

I'd be inclined to keep both.
If space is that much of a problem, sell your full-size DP and get a
$100 bench-top drill press. That will do most of what you need.
No place to set even that? Crank the MD table over and clamp the small
DP to the end of the table.

I'd keep the drill press in a corner somewhere. You can set it up on
the end of the mill-drill table whenever you need to drill in some
awkward place where the mill-drill won't reach. Otherwise a mill-drill
makes a very nice drill press. You lose the tilting table and the
ability to drill into the end of a long part or to swing the table so
the bit passes down beside it. I'm not sure if the head of a mill-drill
is balanced well enough to safely rotate it very far from center.

Those bench-top drill presses can be clamped to large stationary
objects to drill holes in them. I used one that way to put 1/2" holes
in a steel beam to make a log splitter.

jw

For a hobby shop or with limited space a mill-drill is preferable to
all but the best drillpress. The round column mill-drill allows you to
swing the head around to work on thick or long pieces. You can hang
angle iron off the back of the table for fixturing if necessary.

My mill-drill is MT3 and it's great to be able to use MT drills or
have multiple chucks set up for quick changes. I do a lot more
drilling than milling but it's nice to be able to run an endmill
occasionally.

Cheers,

Kelley

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:07:33 GMT, Richard Ferguson
wrote:

I have seen many threads in which people argue about the merits of
Mill-Drills as Milling machines, but I don't want to talk about that.

I have a medium drill press, a 20 year old Enco machine, with chaning
belt type speed control, RPM 240-3800 RPM, mounted on a bench. It is
2MT, but I only use the regular drill chuck, goes up to 5/8 inch. The
table cranks up and down fairly easily, and when I need to I can adjust
the angle of the table. I do not have an XY table. It is a bench top model.

I don't have space for a drill and a mill, so if I get a mill-drill I
would sell the drill. I would probably go for a lower end mill-drill. I
have no machining experience.

So what would I give up if I upgraded from my drill press to a
mill-drill? Or would I just have a better drill press with some milling
capability?

Richard