BigPoser

I'm on the hunt for a mill. I've used a Nichols horizontal mill with a Anvil main tube mitering set up and really liked it. I've got a line on horizontal mill and wanted to get thoughts about what you all prefer more and why.

Thanks in advance!

Brandon

CliffordK

Hmmm... I think of a horizontal mill mainly for things like cutting notches and slitting.

A good vertical mill with a quill and adjustable head has a lot of flexibility.

I have my South Bend up in the shop. Nice mill, but runs a little bit loose. I'll probably have to eventually tear it down and rebuild.

I've been meaning to try a CNC conversion on a Harbor Freight mill.

Andrew R Stewart 

For most building a horizontal mill is fine assuming the table travel and table/spindle dimensions work for you. But when talking about tool making the vertical mill wins IMO.

Clifford- Running loose? As in table feed lash or spindle slop? I just did a table (x and y movement) servicing on my SB clone. Reduced the lash a bit on both axises. But the real improvement is the DRO scales I added. Much nicer to locate the cutter with. Andy

unterhausen

for tube mitering, a horizontal mill seems ideal. For general milling, it will work but require some creativity.

CliffordK

There is a lot of slop in the X/Y movement of the table. I can turn the cranks significantly before reversing direction of movement. I haven't dug into it too much to try to track it down.

The locks on the table work well, and I can lock one axis of the table, then it is good enough to move one direction at a time.

Still learning to use the beast, and I haven't done a lot of machining lately.

It has been handy for a few projects, such as slotting the axle slots on my cargo trailer. And, since I used a chopped channel iron, machining them flat.

I did spline a shaft once. That was interesting. Not perfect, but good enough to work for what I needed.

I still need to build some frame jigs for it. The quill and knee work well, and so I presume cutting tubes would be fine.

calstar 

"Slop" in the table x/y axis is pretty much alleviated if you use a dro as movement is only recorded when the table moves, not when the handles turn. I put some inexpensive iGaging, x,y,z axis, ( https://www.igagingstore.com/Product...show=60&page=1 ) on an old mill/drill I have, made it much more useful. Quite a few utube vids on installing them if you're interested, pretty straight forward. Have a pic of your mill you can post?

Brian

unterhausen

that's true if you never have to climb cut. Some mills have a nut that can be split to take up backlash. Dunno if the low-end Chinese mill drills have that or not. I imagine that many mills have backlash because the gibs need to be adjusted and the thrust bearings aren't wholly effective.

Andrew R Stewart 

Here's an incomplete Flicker album of the recent servicing of my mill. The x travel feed screw nut was split, the Y wasn't. Now it is too. However even with some reduction of the lash amount from pre service the mill still has some. So like any tool one needs to learn it's behavoir and "work" with that. Adding the DROs (not yet posted to the album) certainly helps to control cutter placement. https://www.flickr.com/photos/731955...57710806513026 Here's a shot of the DRO scales read outs I added. Andy

unterhausen

The manual bridgeports I have worked with had backlash. You just need to approach from the same direction every time.

Doug Fattic 

I have 2 vertical milling machines, a South Bend and a Bridgeport. Many years ago I sold an Index and wish I could have it back. I also have a small 9" South Bend lathe. I wish I could exchange it for a heavy 10" with a much bigger through hole. Horizontal mills are great for mitering and have a small footprint and can be found at reasonable prices because they aren't as useful for general milling practices. Brandon if you want to continue building frames in the future, your long term plan might be to have both a horizontal and vertical mill. That way you don't have to disturb your mitering set up when you want to do something else. A vertical mill is very useful for making tooling to build frames. It also works great for mitering tubes. However it is a bit of a bother to take off the mitering future when you want to do something else.

unterhausen

I wonder if all the little Nichols horizontals belong to framebuilders nowadays. They used to go for cheap on ebay, not sure how I would get one home though. The grizzly horizontal seems like it's just a little too small, but it would work

Andrew R Stewart 

I haven't done the measurement but I wonder how many small horizontals have enough table travel to complete a miter through a OS tube with a tight angle. And this assumes best cutter and tube locating, not always achievable. Andy

BigPoser

I had certainly thought that the best set up would be a vertical and a horizontal or even two horizontals for both main tube mitering and chainstay mitering.

BigPoser

The Nichols are great! I wish there were more of them on the interweb. Here on the west coast, finding a decent machine in good condition while at a good price is difficult at best. Seems like there a quite a few on the east coast however.

unterhausen

yeah, the west coast has some nice machines, but most of the small machines are on the East Coast. We used to have a K&T horizontal in our lab, converted to some kind of bearing tester. That thing was an amazing waste of space. I got rid of it. Then later, I saw a much bigger K&T at Penn State salvage. I don't want to think of how much the rigging charges were on that machine.

I think an ideal small shop machine is one of the convertible Deckels. They have some issues with limited travel, but they certainly do just about everything a frame shop needs. Big money, unless you can find one at an auction. There was one builder that had a Nichols for every operation, built a nice big shop and got a lot of orders and just quit. Not saying it was because of all the Nichols he had.

I think for my purposes, putting a crane on the mill so that moving stuff on and off the mill is a better use of resources than multiple machines. Even with more than half of the basement and half of the garage, I'm suffering from lack of space.

Andrew R Stewart 

Eric- We need to move in with each other My half of the basement and half of the garage is also running out of space.

When I first moved back to my hometown I checked out a Makerspace effort. The facility was nice but with wood floors insurance prevented any welding/brazing and the access by others, who won't respect tools and such, was a concern for me to move in my nicer tools.

I do feel fortunate to have grown up in the rust belt. Lots of history of making stuff and resources for tools and abilities I don't have. Andy

CliffordK

What kind of bicycle parts do you need a crane to lift?

My Southbend Knee Mill was unloaded with a come-along.



My Harbor Freight Mill came home by bicycle.

unterhausen

my mill weighs 5500 lbs. The knee weighs the same as a Series I bridgeport. I had to get a 10000 lb capacity off-road forklift to get it in my basement. Got my lathe in there with a boom forklift, that was fun and a lot easier.

Cranes come in all sizes, I'm talking about a small one. Vise cranes are sometimes called vise caddies. The reason for them is to be able to take a heavy piece of equipment like a tube mitering fixture on and off the table easily and without crushing your hands or throwing out your back. https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C...w=1148&bih=555

eta: I like your cargo bike, but the tongue weight on the trailer might be a little too high

BigPoser

After a long search for any kind of mill, I ended up getting a nice US No 1 horizontal mill. Popped up in Seattle where my father was able to grab it for me. Hoping to have it in my shop in a couple weeks.

Any suggestions for vises or tooling?

I was thinking of a nice 8" rotary table and 5-6" vise to start.

Thanks for all the info.