The guys are right...MOST of the "new" import smaller stuff is not very well made at all, accuracy and castings, ways, grindings, plumb, roundness, etc.. are all things that rarely are correct on a "new" import machine. With a lot of work and time (read $$'s) you can get them up to snuff. That being said, the older RongFu's and much of the older generation stuff out of Taiwan or Japan are indeed quite high quality units - I've owned one for years and just spent yesterday afternoon milling out a battery tray for my Mullicoupe which started out as a solid chunk of 1/2" AL plate (you should see the mountain of chips leftover from removing all that material). I have a bit more work to do on it, but it's coming along nicely! We also use it quite a bit here in our shop for a variety of things and sometimes to cuout hold in instrument panels, pedestals, or make little widgets. A bridgeport is nice to have, and can be found cheaply, but they do take up a good bit of space and remember you still need to get tooling. Many older ones can be had reasonably, but I've seen a ton of them that are quite worn in the leadscrews, quills, knees, etc.. so be very carefull of that. Parts for BP's are easy to get and CNC conversions are easy/cheap. Some of the Import stuff uses odd collets, metric tooling, metric scales, etc..
Anyway, the goldmine of information about anything mill/lathe/cnc is this site:
http://www.cnczone.com
It's like VAF for machinists. Do some searching their on the Grizzly X3, and you'll see that it can be made into quite a good machine, but out of the box results can vary - a lot! Sure, some of the newer round column mills are weak, but just because it has a dovetail "square" column doesn't mean a thing of the ways are junk. A good giveaway is anything that has all sorts of "bells/whistles" that you'll never use. A Tilting head on a small machine like that? All that does is add a spot of weakness and therefore flex/slop into the head. That being said, If I was doing a new CNC conversion I might seriously look at that mil...except I probably can find a good BP for almost the same price (if I had the room)!
For a typical smaller shop you can't beat the good qaulity RongFu's or similar generation of machines. There are some others out there for less money or more money, some smaller and some bigger, but for 90% of what you need it'll do the job. I have a powerfeed on mine and it makes doing repetitive tasks like removing material quite easy. While I'm no expert machinist, I have been around and used many different pieces of equipment from huge multi-axis cnc centers to little cnc mills like my Taig. A small toolroom lathe is also handy. Just beware or the "Horrible Fright" type tools. While cheap, you can read and see stories all over the net of what it takes to get them up to what many people would consider usable. Many of the import units don't even bother to clean out all the sand from the rough casting and paint right over it.
Anyway, below is a quick pic of our little RF and the battery tray I roughed out yesterday. We use that mill a LOT and it's paid for itself many times over. Same with our little CNC taig. I did a lot of homework and played with a lot of machines before I bought what I have. It's good to try and see some in person and perhaps play with them a bit before you commit. In the end, the truth is that most all of the machines (new or old) are going to be better and more accurate than the person using them....just like guns!
I'd really like to have Bill's setup, but alas, I just don't have the room!
Cheers,
Stein
