3-in-1 combo metal removal machines

GA.... but I would like to add that its not just American iron that's good... Add British to the list as well....

Yes!!! I pine for a Colchester, but alack and alas, I can not afford such a work of art.

In addition to the very good analysis above about cheap equipment versus quality equipment, one of the major requirements for close-tolerance work is minimal vibration, which means a solid footing for the machine (and LOTS of weight), which you are unlikely to get with a 3 in one machine. Even if you are only working in softer materials, the light weight and poor anchoring of your 3 in 1 machine will severely limited the accuracy you can achieve.

The expensive machines are those that don't foot the bill; the 3-in-1 combo fits here, and need to be replaced by those that will; the stand alone made for the purpose - right tool for the job.

Out of many that are available in the 3-in-1 category, I have heard good about Patriot machine made by Shoptask. They claim that their machine is quite heavy and solid and all built for CNC. Is that really the truth or just some propaganda? I have seen on their website lots of claims about their machine being the latest and greatest. I have not had any opportunity to verify that. But they also claim that their customer service and technical support is second to none. This I have verified to be totally untrue. Repeated calls to their customer support or tech support don't care to pick up the phones, they do not respond to emails, if at all they do, never on time. They don't even like to sign the emails with any specific names. You have no idea who sent the email. The email comes from Shoptask that's all. If their claim about their machine quality is as good as their claim for their tech support and customer service, then the big bucks they are asking for the machine could be a total waste?

Well I'm bummed here. Spent most of an hour writing a decent set of comments only to have it disappear forever when I went to edit a minor mistake. Serves me right for being too wordy.

So in a nutshell -- Look at Grizzly. They have a good reputation and a nice website. They sell both individual and 3 in one machines so aren't likely to have an ax to grind. If your work is small like models look at Sherline.

3 in one machines are really 2 in one machines in my opinion. Their worst face is as a drill press. In general the space for work holding or mounting is too small. And while you are set up to do one job the other functions are with rare exceptions not available for separate jobs.

Like many others I'd prefer individual machines in the following order:

Good drill press with nice slow speed (to turn drills over 1/2" and hole saws for metal and a big table. Floor mounted drill presses can nuzzle up to the end of a 34 inch high workbench and not take up much room with the table overhanging the end of the workbench. Slow minim speed is important for drills over 1/2" or metal cutting hole saws until you have a suitable mill.

Dual wood and metal cutting 14 inch band saw. Most used power tool in my workshop. Use a 14 tooth 1/2" wide blade for just about everything. Don't waste money on the Mickey mouse blade welders they sell on these things.

One or possibly two good bench grinders for the various wheels you'll need.

A good 8 inch belt sander and a selection of belt grits from 32 to 150. 3/4 hp minimum. (real motor rating; not this 1.4 service factor stuff)

9 - 12 inch bench lathe like a South Bend (preferred) or an Atlas if you can find a good used one or a decent new offering from Grizzly (like their 12 inch Gunsmith Lathe) incl quick change gear box, 3 and 4 jaw chucks and faceplate. Quick change tool holders are nice; but can be added later. 5C collet capability if possible; these are the only reasonably priced collets unless you are into a small bench lathe set up to use Erickson style double taper collets. Don't buy a taper attachment or a spindle grinder until you're really sure you need it. Ditto the milling attachment that gives vertical feed for a piece mounted on the carriage for small scale milling like keyways

As big a vertical mill as you can fit in your workshop. Don't go cheap here. I have a 7 x 30 1-1/2hp 2 speed 3 phase motor(running on an idler motor to convert single to 3 phase) Jet turret mill made in Japan about 25 year ago. Love it. If it were still available it would be easily a $4K machine. About half the weight of a Bridgeport. Grizzly offers something similar looking made in China. Make sure your mill has an R-8 spindle unless you are going for a small bench type. Stay away from cheap mill drills. They are mostly junk. Every couple of years another guy writes a series of articles in Home Shop Machinist magazine on how he spent a serious chunk of his life rebuilding a mill drill into a passable working tool.

Unless you are a savvy shopper plan on spending near half your milling machine budget on all the tooling you'll need for it. Digital readouts are very nice. Lathes are not expensive like that, especially if you spend a little time learning to sharpen your own tools. Unlike mills the lathes usually come with major tooling already in the package.

Get a drill doctor to rough sharpen your drills and then learn how to hand finish the back clearance by hand on a grinding wheel.

In all cases insist on quality American made electric motors or a long motor guarantee as a minimum if a foreign made motor is all that's available.

Note here: IMHO 1100-1200 pounds of machine tool is the most the average guy wants to mess around with moving unless he has some serious rigging experience and capabilities for machinery moving. Specifically if you plan on a Bridgeport (2200 pounds) line up a professional to move it for you and make sure it will fit through the door to your shop. Forget about offers from that friend with a tractor and front mounted bucket to help. If your shop is in a basement with the only access down a staircase even 500 pounds of machine will stretch every thread of your being to finish the moving job.

Yeah, I know, big nutshell..........

Ed Weldon

Bridgeports are easy to manage if you break them down first. The lower base casting is the heaviest at about 800 pounds. It takes two to three hours to do this and I put them on dollies to move them.

I rent a small engine crane at the local tool rental store. I have moved a full sized bridgeport into a house, then down into a basement, and back out of the house when I moved and I did it by myself. I weigh 140 pounds.

Unfortunately, mass is important for machine tools, but if you are putting this into a garage (as I have now), then it is no big deal if you take your time and think.

I would say that I generally agree with Anonymous Hero that combo machines usually are a tradeoff between each of the machining processes. But before you make a decision you may want to consider a Smithy machine. U.S. made, very reliable, reasonable cost and have been around for a little over 20 years. Here are some links to get you started. Good luck and keep us posted.

http://www.smithy.com/index.php#

Pricing: http://www.americanmachinetools.com/

Review: http://www.atm-workshop.com/smithy1220xl.html

GA - Bought a Smithy 15 years ago for sample parts/development & still in use today. If you need .001" precision & repeatable accuracy, none of the 3 in 1 units (that I am aware of) are the right solution.

I see that you are located in Canada. Mind telling me where? Do you have one of these 3-in-1 machines. If you are close by, I would love to take a look at it on power to see how this baby works.

MechGuy,

I am in the Greater Toronto Area and I do not have a Smithy but considering buying one. The website I listed has videos of several different machining operations. Check them out.

UFG

Hmmmm.....so you were planning to buy a Smithy? I was leaning more towards the Shoptask. I don't know if that will be a mistake. I am mainly leaning towards shoptask is because of its larger swing and higher rigidity. Do other things in Smithy outweigh those two factors in shoptask? I wonder. Any Advise or a comparative analysis between the two?

Hello,

I was checking the spindle runout spec's of Smithy ± .oo16 = .0032" vs. Wabeco 0.0002", having and expectancy of disparity from one dimension/diameter to the next of a possible 0.006" vs. less than 0.001" what could be the reasoning of considering a Smithy as precision equipment??

Shoptask has a few quirks too and the precision isn't any better than the Smithy. How do you intend to mill with a Jacob's chuck? The calls out R-8 and MT-3 arbors but you can't mix an match these?

If you look real close there is little difference between any of these china machines. I couldn't with clear conscience recommend any of low end models such as are the topic of this thread. I can suggest do a little searching and find an older South Bend lathe that fits your shop area and search again for the milling attachments that were designed for them.

Get a mill first and make your own lathe

Go to local auctions - often times you can get quality machinery which is being sold off because a high school or government organization has decided to downsize thier shops. Often you can purchase these items for pennies on the dollar.

The downside to going to a full sized machine (aside from space) is power requirements - a sufficiently large machine might require 3 phase power, and you'll have to check your local zoning laws to see if you can have that run to your house. You arent going to plug a full sized bridgeport into a 110v-120v wall outlet...

I understand even on here the voice is probably unanimous that the 3-in-1 machines are not the "real" thing, if you really want to get "serious about quality". Having understood that, let's say, someone does not have a choice about the space in his home workshop and can afford to have only one machine, instead of buying three different machines, can someone give at least a rating or comparison about which of these multitude of machines in the market is better than the other. I have heard about Grizzly, Smithy, Patriot (Shoptask), Sherline, Maximat, Craftex and so on that make 3-in-1s.

By the way, someone in here mentioned that the Smithy is made in America. May be in the past, but no more. Everything used to be made in America. Now as I called them to confirm, they all pretty much said, "we engineer and design it in America, and then we get it made in China". Smithy, Grizzly, Shoptask, all said the same thing. Is that any consolation?

I would love to know for someone seriously trying to open a home based small "manufacturing business" - not a hobby, and seriously limited by space (and of course money to rent industrial space outside), which machine would give him the best bang for the buck.

I started my shop in a large closet less than 8 feet by 8 feet. That was with an Emco (not Enco!) Super 11CD lathe and a bench mill. Pretty much all bench mills are junk; some are better junk than others. I gave mine away.

You can find Bridgeports with 30" tables if space is cramped. The footprint of a Bridgeport isn't that big, it is the table and its motion that eats up space. It tucks nicely into a corner of my garage diagonally and needs less than 5 feet each side and mine is a 42" table.

I recommend the Southbend lathe as it is reasonably small. The Emco Super 11 is very good (better than the Southbend), but even used they cost a lot (because they are good).

Clausing made a bench top mill, that if you can find one, will be far better than anything else that sits on the bench. Bench top mills are such a compromise that you will be very frustrated with most of them.

The Shurline mill actually is not a bad little tool. You can make small parts with high precision if you take your time. They will not hog out much metal at a time, so you have to go very slow and take shallow cuts. Any of the bench tops will have limitations on how much they can cut.

I have seen some pretty great stuff made on small machines and their creators are very, very proud! They should be, it takes them forever to do the most basic things. If you would like an idea of what I mean, try to do whittling of wood using a paper clip and see how it goes. :)

Mechguy -- "which machine would give him the best bang for the buck." really depends on the business and the individual's capabilities. Every situation is different. When it comes to serious business of any kind it is all too easy to overinvest in tools that don't produce a good return or are underutilized. You end up tying up valuable working capital in stuff that doesn't contribute.

Another extremely important component has to do with setup time. The fewer tools there are the more time will be spent in setup. Except in very rare cases setup activities are never as profitable as production.

Even if the parts you will make are small you may want to make tools and fixtures that are considerably larger. The small drilling and milling envelope in a 3 in one machine can be very limiting. Also the flexibility of operations possible on part to be fabricated diminishes as the part gets over 50% of the maximum size capacity of the machine tool.

Personally I think that a 3 in one machine is more suited to a maintenance/repair/custom building shop than to a production activity. And I agree that space limitations can truly be a dominant issue for many. Clever and creative fixture building offers interesting opportunities for extending the capabilities of these machines, especially if close tolerances are not a primary issue. To me another important factor is the ability of the machine to operate a low speeds and maximum power for large size drills and similar cutting tools.

"Made in China" is not necessarily bad. They do have some very capable factories and people over there. The real trick is twofold. First is the importer experienced enough to specify exactly what he wants the Chinese factory to produce for him and then verify that he is getting what he specified? Second, can you trust the importer to sell you exactly what you need and want and can you yourself articulate that requirement?

Ed Weldon

Thank you Anonymous Hero for some of the clues that you gave about good quality machines. Now, as you also mentioned, they are not easy to get. I have been looking for good machines for a while, but if it is really good machine, then no one wants to part with them. It is only the junk ones that people want to get rid of and are available on ebay and elsewhere. But I want to start very soon. I do not want to sit and wait for a good machine to come by in a years time. If I need to go buy immediately one of your recommended machines or even one of these 3-in-1s, where can find the good machines. Someone suggested to go to an auction. But then auctions are not happening everyday in my neighbourhood cities either, and if they do, there is no guarantee, that there will be an item in the auction that I am looking for. I need something soon and need to go and get it from someone or some store, used or new, but smaller in size, or a combination of them

I am also considering getting one of these machines bought as CNC or getting them converted to CNC later on. Which one is more sound idea, buying a machine that is already fitted with CNC and proven to work, or to buy the bare machine first and then get it converted to CNC when I have "felt out" the machine first.

Mechguy -- Some very nice used machines can be found at estate sales. Often bought later in life and lightly used. A coating of dust and light rust can do remarkable things to hold the price down and often a king's ransom in tooling resides in a cabinet or a box seemingly forgotten on the floor and totally unrecognized by the seller. The real trick is to contact the seller the day before the estate sale signs go up. These things are serendipitous. Hard to fit into a serious business plan.

Forget about CNC machines for now. You need to develop a whole skill and knowledge set related to machining before you mess with CNC. Then if you decide to convert a manual machine to CNC there is a whole "nother" skill set for you to acquire before you learn the hard way that conversion is a half assed approach for all but the most skilled mechanics with serious electronic control knowledge. Unless, of course, the machine has been specifically engineered to be convertible with an expensive kit sold by the machine manufacturer. Even then be wary of design compromises inherent in this sort of thing.

When the time comes buy a machine that is CNC from the "gitgo" with the realization that it likely won't work well under manual control and may not work at all that way. The first tip-off, of course, would be the absence of hand wheels.

But if you have to buy now, buy quality so if it turns out to be wrong for you at least you'll be able to recover some of your investment. But first I'd write down detailed descriptions of the first 10 real jobs waiting for you to do and see how many can be done with the new machine and the available skills.

Ed Weldon

I would highly recommend looking up a used machine broker in the phone book and see if you can have him work for you (sort of like a realestate agent).

That was how I found my mill. My broker knew where all the auctions were, took me to one that he felt would have what I wanted and then proceeded to walk through every machine and tell me which ones were good and which ones to stay away from at the auction. Cost me a few hundred bucks, but I only had to buy my Bridgeport once instead of making a mistake and having to pay for that.

Another option is to befriend a machinist (preferably one that really knows the ropes) to help guide you to a good machine.

Hmmmmm Anonymous Hero, both of your suggesions are good. But both of them are harder to get in Canada, than in the US. In Canada there are hardly anyone who is a machine "broker" as in the real estate business. In machine business here, most are "buyers and sellers" of machines, who buy used machine and then clean it with soap water to sell it the next day at a premium, without even knowing how to turn on the machine and where the switch is located. At least real estate people can look at a property and tell you if it is a good buy or a bad buy. Machine sellers (including if they call themselves brokers) here are total ignorant people about machines (or at least very very difficult to find a good one).

The other option to befriend a machinist is a good idea. But then, unless I personally know he is a good machinist, how am I going to assess his judgement about machines either. There are good machinist and there are bad machinist too, right?, with good knowledge and not so good knowledge?

It definitely poses a different challenge being in Canada. There are no such machine manufactuers in Canada. Most of the good machines are either made in USA or UK, with the only option for us is to "import" it at a huge cost of "freight and tarrif" added on. That itself increases the machine cost a lot more compared to if I were in the US. Then there is the problem of flying out personally or sending a befriended machinist to go there to inspect it before buying - in the end costs a lot. Buying used machine right in Canada is costly because of the same reason, because after all the seller incurred the same higher costs when he bought his. Any shortcut to all these?

So, as far as some of the specific 3-in-1 machines are concerned, no one has any opinion about them? Smithy vs. Shoptask vs. Sherline vs. Grizzly vs. BusyBee vs. Emco Maximat vs. Etc. Etc. ?? Anyone has any bad experience with any of them? Anyone has any good experience about them? If you don't like to blurt out publicly on here, if that is the problem, you can reply just to me instead of posting on the thread.

Emco is a very good company.