I see a slow growing trend of the hobby light duty machine shop in the United States. There is a definite niche for the smaller size high quality high speed machines that are fairly common in the European hobby market. This includes such brands as the Proxxon, Prazi and Emco and others. The English Myford is on the small list. Also included are the US brands of Sherline and Taig. I am talking about small machine tools that are ready to work right out of the shipping box.

Massive slow machines ARE NOT necessary to build accurate, light weight hobby machined projects. Yes, mass is good but it also depends on the size and weight of the parts being machined. Bench top machining is an equal bang for the buck, space and pound than the more resource demanding (mostly space and power) full house heavy floor model machine tools. Using today’s high quality indexed carbide tooling when making small size parts, demands much more SFM than old machines were designed to hold or to run (at the high end). A large chuck and the part it is holding spinning at 2500 RPM is scarry! I have always stated that very small parts are easier/better made on small high speed machine tools. It is an exchange of speed for mass.

Some “old iron” pundits point to the low end rpm (no back gear) and the very high top end rpm of small machine tools as faults. I say they are not faults. They are required features. Small threads are better made with dies even when low speed is available. The pros prefer dies. Single point cutting does not inherently make a “better” thread. However, I would still like a low speed gear for large diameter threads… Continue reading →