Vertical Milling Machine

Comments about Central Machinery Vertical Milling Machine:

First impression was good, the machine is heavy, and well finished. Very little plastic used, only a couple of knobs. The pulleys are steel, and very heavy, no plastic gears to break. The belt system is good, although to get all the speeds you have to sometimes remove the belts to get them on the right pulleys, easy to do. The small plunger on the belt tension system will fall out if you are not carefull when changing speeds. I may machine a groove in it to prevent this. The draw bar will not work without some mods. I had to make a small spacer to go under the nut, as there are not enough threads to tighten the draw bar. When the draw bar is in place, you cannot close the top cover, so I had to drill a hole in the cover to allow it to cloose. The mill will not run with the cover open due to a safety switch, you can jog the motor with it open, but it will not keep running, which is probably good. The cover is extremely heavy cast aluminium, and works well. The spindle travel return spring is very strong, which is OK, unless you are working on something delicate, no doubt that could changed if needed. All the handwheels are solid steel and the graduations are easy to read. One thing that is surprising is the specs listed do not give the full range of the machine. The vertical travel of the knee is listed as 7.68, which means the spindle to table is about 8 inches, not very good. I found that if you mount the machine on a base about 16 inches high, and drill a hole in the base under the knee lead screw.This allows the lead screw to extend below the base of the machine. The knee travel is much greater, giving about 13 inches spindle to table distance. The table and cross travel are also a little more than stated. So far I have only done a few light milling operations, using a fly cutter and a 1/2 inche end mill, also drilled some holes about 4 inches deep. You will need to check the head angle before you use it, mine was tilted over a little, the bolts were not very tight, so it no doubt move during shipping. Conclusion, so far so good, great value for the money. Harbor Freight should carry these in the stores, I am sure they could sell more of them if people could see them up close.