Quote Originally Posted by chrisjames View Post
I had figures as much. I was hoping that as its a small area I want to mill it may be easier.
5mm or 5000mm in size cutting is the same. The grade of material determines how easy or hard to machine and the cutting machine needs to be up to the task. Stainless is hard and fussy regards heat making it very intolerant of being cut wrong. Like wise the hardness really taxes the machine so if it's weak then surface finish and tool life will suffer.
Weak machine and cutting wrong will soon have you pulling your air out has the cutters ping and snap like carrots has the Stainless work hardens.!!! . . . . In which case you'll then need explosives to shift material.!!

Any of those little mills will handle Stainless to some degree but you have to realise they are limited in there abiltys so need to be run accordingly. Feed rates and DOC will be painfully slow milling stainless so if these matter then not really the right tool.
If your wanting high accurecy and high quality finish with any kind of decent feed rate then they will struggle.

Re- converting then again same applies regards limitations. It also depends to what degree the conversion is done.? Some kits just provide motor mounts etc and use the existing Lead screws which to me is doing half the job.
Proper CNC conversion really needs Ballscrews but this does bump up the price and time/work involved but really is the only way to do it IMO.
This is why you will struggle with only 1K to do a good conversion by the time you have bought the mill. The base machine is key.? No point buying a flimsy machine just because it's cheap. Can't make a silk purse out of sows ear.!!
You need the right base machine then go from there with converting to high standard and you stand half a chance. Personaly I don't think you can do it with 1K unless you drop on a really cheap machine that is upto the task in strength terms.

MHO is if converting then to forget these Mini mills like x1 x2 if at all possible and look for something robust and convert that. Like these RF45 clone square coloumn type mills often see converted. They are much more upto the job and won't cost much more if you look around and buy wisely.