Hobby milling machines now in stock - Perfect for conversions

[Neale]

Yes, that was me - casual visitors looked at the 3D printer, and anyone with a model engineering background had a chat about the spark eroder. A group of club members are currently working on a wire EDM machine on a similar small scale.

I built the Prusa which gave me a taste for CNC so I built a quick-and-dirty CNC router (JGRO design, all MDF). Had a lot of fun with that and did some useful work as well but it taught me enough that the mk2, currently about 90% complete, needed a lot more attention to some critical areas (while trying not to overbuild). When I get round to mk2 printer I shall take a similar approach, although the technology has moved on a lot.

Coming back, vaguely, to the original topic, I built a small vertical mill from a part-machined kit many years ago, and it's still in use. However, it now sits alongside a Chinese vertical mill which, in real terms, probably cost rather less than the original kit for significantly more capacity. The kind of machine shown in this thread represents how much easier it is now to get decent machining capacity at home than it used to be, even for a build-it-if-you-can dinosaur like me.