Get me Taiwanese!

I got my milling machine puzzle solved. I thought I had it solved yesterday, but it’s more solved today. It is now just a question of deciding which Asian mill to get. I learned a few things that might be helpful to other people who are Googling around, trying to figure out which milling machine is the best buy. This may not be absolutely correct, but it’s close enough.

Forget Bridgeport. Forget all American machines. If you find a great deal on a mill some nutcase bought new and only used as a music stand, great, but generally, American machines are overpriced, and it can be very hard to find one that isn’t pretty worn where it counts. It might be worth the effort if there was something special about American milling machines, but there is not. They are not the best. So don’t bother.

You want a Taiwanese mill. Chinese mills are also okay, but they’re generally not quite as good, and Taiwanese is a safer bet. Sharp and Acer are two brands you can trust. If you Google, you will find a number of experienced machinists who say the better Taiwanese mills are superior to Bridgeports. Not “nearly as good.” Superior. And they definitely have more features. So whatever the truth is, they’re good enough for your garage.

You can get a top name brand for seven thousand and up. Something like that. You will never wear it out in your home shop. It will do anything a Bridgeport can do. Parts are readily available. It is not a risky buy.

There are cheaper Taiwanese mills that are fundamentally just as good. Made in the same factories, to the same tolerances. They may not be as pretty, and they may have fewer doodads on them. But under the bells and whistles…same machine, from the same assembly line, made by the same people, from the same parts.

One example–I may get one of these–is GMC. This is a company that split off from Birmingham. They will put a very nice Taiwanese mill in your hands for under five thousand dollars. They have customer service, but even if they did not, parts for the various Taiwanese mills tend to be interchangeable, because they are THE SAME PARTS.

There is some confusion (in my mind, at least) about where the final assembly is done on these things. I think some are finished off in China. But it probably does not matter.

The mills GMC resells are also sold by MSC as their proprietary Vectrax line. I checked, and these things go for over eleven grand. They come with DROs, but that doesn’t justify a $6000+ price difference. They’re also sold as Precision Matthews.

It ought to be obvious what I plan to get. A reconditioned (not fully restored) Bridgeport with an ancient motor and no warranty will cost around $4500, delivered. Any way you slice it, I have to pay a thousand dollars just to get it here, so that jacks up the price. It will have no DRO and no power feed, and it will be lighter and less rigid than a Taiwanese mill, and it will probably have a smaller table with less travel. The motor will probably be 1 1/2 HP or less, whereas the Asian jobs typically have 3 HP. The Asian spindles are bigger and stronger. A new Taiwanese mill with a warranty, a DRO, a power feed, and pretty new paint will run six hundred dollars more than a highly dubious Bridgeport. The resale won’t be as good (unless the Bridgeport really craps out), but it’s a better machine, and I am not planning to sell it. It’s a lifetime buy. Would you consider the resale value on an artificial hip?

It looks like Taiwanese for me. I might spend a little more and get a better DRO, but probably not, because thousandths are thousandths, no matter who designs the chip that measures them.

Grizzly and Shop Fox (Grizzly in white paint) sell Chinese mills. People seem to like the more recent ones. They’re a little cheaper than a GMC, and Grizzly has great service. But the product is probably not quite as good as Taiwanese, and the price is nearly the same. If you buy a Taiwanese Grizzly, I think they start at about 8K. So forget Grizzly and Shop Fox.

One other good option is the Millrite I saw locally. I can probably put that in the garage for under two thousand, and it probably has very little wear. It has the original paint, it looks great, and Millrites aren’t generally used for production. But sooner or later, it will limit me because of its size. And can you put a DRO or a power feed on a Millrite? I don’t even know.

That’s the summary. There may be little factual problems with it, but I’m satisfied that Taiwanese is my nearly perfect machining answer. I wanted a neat old American machine, but we just can’t compete with Asians any more. We can’t even come close. I bought a 35-year-old American lathe, and it looks like it has been through hell, and I had to replace the motor. I did the “buy American” thing, and I feel like I have been punished enough. I was a moron. Now I want a cheap tool I can actually use.