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Originally Posted by JThiessen
Redshift - that there was definitley engineers porn.....love it! I liked how they were doing the fan blades - must have been part of a prototype process.
Linc - I talked with one of my mechanics at work this morning. He has been building his own submarine over the last 5 years, and he bought one of those Grizzly combo units. He said it works good as a lathe, but for the mill portion, he has issues keeping the dovetails true - and that is what I was thinking the difference will be between cheaper machines and some a little higher end. He said if he could do it over again, he wouldn't have bought this one. He didn't know which he would have bought, but he said he'd of spent more money. He did say that the place he bought it at had both grizzly and jet, and he thought at the time the Grizzly seemed to be built better. Now he's not so sure. In the store, neither one seemed like the dove tails had any slop - but they probably had so much grease packed into them that they felt solid.
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So uh, just your average tinkerer then..
The problem is there are really only Grizzly or HF for choices with the combo machines. There are a few disadvantages with combos, but are outweighed by the advantages IMO.
One example would be that your lathe chuck doubles as an indexer. Another is the ability to do spin-milling. For cutting large square recesses on shafts, that can be priceless. I have been annoyed with some projects in the past, having to go between the lathe and the mill. Because you need to re-find your reference point every time...
I think unless you are doing military-spec work, any of the HF or Grizzly machines would do quite well. The size of the machine needs to be determined by whatever the individual deems sufficient.
As for the venerable Bridgeport, I have used good ones and really sloppy ones. That's almost entirely a matter of how they were maintained, but no consolation when you need to hold +- .001 on a machine with 5X or more that amount of slop.
That illustrates my philosophy I guess. Do more, with less!