It was a childhood dream of mine to have the mythical German U-boat multi-tool that could make anything. Well, this one's a passable Chinese. It's 7 years old with little use, and is far better than reviews I've read of more recent ones. I had to sell my other lathe to make room for it which went to a friend.
I've taken it all apart for cleaning and lube, and I've now made my first mill cut at home! Loving it. Nice dovetail ways on it with a good amount of surface area. The mill is a bit anemic; I might throw a dedicated 1 hp motor up there, but for now, it's got everything I need in my little space. Just need a decent vise for milling and a quick change tool holder for the lathe.
It's got the old school tool holder that makes you shim the cutters to height, so I'm going to make some brass wedges to make that a breeze.
I was going to buy a bunch of tooling for it, but now think I'll make it an NC, since I have most of the stuff; motors, amps and a DeskCNC card. I'll see how it goes. If that one is no good, I've got a few others to try.
At the office, the NC choice is Extratech. I've got a ServoBelt gantry with that control going on soon, but need a Z axis for the spindle, which I may just make at home as as warm-up for the CNC conversion here.
Cool!
