Best cnc mill for under £1500-£2000

[John S]

Welcome Mark.

Tricky question, at the prices you have quoted plus what you want to do it's borderline whether you waste your money or not.

Lets look at this logically and put 2k on the table and explore 3 options, what can you buy already done for 2K ?

There is the KX1 from Arc at just over that and Lester Caine does a Taig conversion for somewhere around that price.

Both may not have the Y axis travel you want for sprockets.

Second option is buy secondhand or a dead CNC.
Secondhand I can't follow thru as too many unknowns, what is it, who did it, what's inside it etc.
Dead CNC's seem to be limited to Denford Triacs and the later Supermax [ very rare ] and Bridgeport BOSS's.
The Triac is still a small mill so Y axis limitations may apply.
The BOSS is large as Robin has said but when converted they can be switched to single phase. One of these is a machine for life but remember at 21 you have probably got a bit of moving to do and that means carting this beast about.

Do a bit of homework first, plus side is many people take pity on a youngster who's interested in all this stuff and you are probably in the best city in the world for finding this gear. Is Riley's still going in the south of the city?
I have had some good deals there over the years

John S. local to you M1 J25.

[xchipx]

Thoroughly appreciate your replies guys, thanks for the welcomes :)

Right first things first.
No 3 phase. This will be my little garage that just has a standard uk power source.
However size shouldnt matter that much as it will be the only thing in there.
The only problem with the size is that i want it to be inclosed as much as possible when its in operation , perhaps some sort of flexie plastic sheet eclosure and air pump with filters - not sure yet.
But the dust from cutting carbon fibre is lethal so its either that or wear a respirator ( but thats not ideal to do 24/7 )

The size of the sprockets would be no larger than 3" to 6" diameter. Obviously the more i could do in " one run " the better.

2 Things that scare me about an old machine :

1 : The size , having to transport and move it. I don't want someone delivering it and knowing where my " mini workshop " is going to be. At the end of the day its a garage, not secure business premises.

2: An old machine scares me, as converting/modernizing one scares the hell out of me. I wanted to see if i could get an " out of the box " ready setup.

Btw not sure if rileys is still going will have to have a look !

[irving2008]

Thoroughly appreciate your replies guys, thanks for the welcomes :)

Right first things first.
No 3 phase. This will be my little garage that just has a standard uk power source.
However size shouldnt matter that much as it will be the only thing in there.
The only problem with the size is that i want it to be inclosed as much as possible when its in operation , perhaps some sort of flexie plastic sheet eclosure and air pump with filters - not sure yet.
But the dust from cutting carbon fibre is lethal so its either that or wear a respirator ( but thats not ideal to do 24/7 )

The size of the sprockets would be no larger than 3" to 6" diameter. Obviously the more i could do in " one run " the better.

2 Things that scare me about an old machine :

1 : The size , having to transport and move it. I don't want someone delivering it and knowing where my " mini workshop " is going to be. At the end of the day its a garage, not secure business premises.

2: An old machine scares me, as converting/modernizing one scares the hell out of me. I wanted to see if i could get an " out of the box " ready setup.

Btw not sure if rileys is still going will have to have a look !

Realistically you're going to want to mill something akin to a hard ali alloy with a working area of some 200 x 200mm minimum. The size alone rules out small mills such as the Syil X2, X3 and even an X5 as all are <160mm which is tight. An X4+ would just about do it but your budget won't (nearer £4000).

More realistically size wise you are looking at the MD25/MD30 Chester/Warco/etc series of machines with a cross travel of 200mm or more (and with 700mm of table you could be machining long parts such as forks) and an appropriate conversion kit..

The Marchant Dice series of routers are OK size wise (500 x 200mm working area) but aren't really sturdy enough and the 1kW spindle isnt up to the milling job unless you take relatively fine cuts.

A little googling shows that many of the commercially available gantry style routers surprisingly (or not) don't list Carbon Fibre as a material they work with (yet do list most plastics and woods). Whether thats an H&S issue i dont know.