Lift or Milling Machine?

I have squirreled away a little nut to buy myself a "major garage item" this year.

case 1) I really want to expand my capability to make things and a bench top gear head mill has been on my short list for five years now. Sometimes I find myself trying to attach my drill press vise to the cross slide on the lathe just to slot something or clean the ends and it never works well. Real milling solutions for lathes are expensive and really very limited in capability. For $2k I can have a pretty capable tool that can hog out 1-1/4 trenches in steel like butter. I know the tooling is going to make this a much more expensive endeavor than just the machine itself but I can start doing real stuff with just a vise and a couple end/face mills.

case 2) I'm too berkeleying old to lie on cold concrete welding things, or bench pressing transmissions into place. I have a 13' ceiling in my garage. For $2k I can save every 45 minutes I'll ever spend using two jacks to get a really low car onto jack stands high enough to work safely under there without brushing my nose on the bottom. An overhead bar 11' 10" Atlas two post that can lift a diesel dually costs just about 2k. There isn't much additional cost to this one except I need to run a new 220 line 200' to power it.

So... what do I do? Expand my Walter Mitty fantasy fabrication capability or abandon the jack-stand as a necessity?

lift and mill. Mrs. GPS & minions don't need new clothes this year - they would want you to be comfortable. If they insist on eating - maybe lift first. I suspect things are on jack stands more often than you need a slot.

Lift.

Lift

Mill. You can make do with a jack and stands. No mill means no milled parts without paying someone else a pile of money.

Lift, no doubt. Useful almost every time you work on any of your cars, not just occasionally.

lift. you'll use it every time you're working on any car. Mill you'll use more occasionally, and if you're only doing occasional jobs a machine shop can always do it if needed.

Do you have a lathe?

5 lifts, 1 mill so far. Huh. I thought the voting would be closer.

oldtin wrote: lift and mill. Mrs. GPS & minions don't need new clothes this year - they would want you to be comfortable. If they insist on eating - maybe lift first. I suspect things are on jack stands more often than you need a slot.

Ha. Things are permanently on jackstands around here. I'm afraid if I had a lift it would be all the way up, with a car on jackstands under it.

And when don't you need a slot, really?

If you get the miller, let me know, and I'll fix you up with some end mills.

Lift

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Do you have a lathe?

Si

Lift. You can pay someone to mill something, you can't pay someone to hold the car up for you. Plus as said previously, it's useful on every single job.

I would say lift as well, then make friends with local machine shop to gain access to their mill, or like in my case, a good friend with a mill.

Mill

you can use it to make your own lift

Depending on the type of material you have to put a slot in or surface, etc. You might be able to get by with an adjustable table adapter for a drill press. This way you can start buying tooling for the mill before you bite the bullet and get a real one next year.

I'd say the lift would be more useful from a day to day standpoint as the tooling for the mill can equal nearly the same amount as the purchase of the mill itself.

Lift, you arent getting any younger.

Once you have either a mill or lift you will curse every day that you don't.

A lift will save you hours a month and a bit of back pain.

A Mill will cost you hours a month but you will be making new and interesting things that no one else has. The car guy with a lathe and mill is almost a sorcerer compared to the rest.

I am having a tough time deciding but still leaning toward the mill.

I have a mill. I wish I had a lift. While BOTH would be nice, I's almost be tempted to trade the mill for a lift. You can do a LOT of "milling" on a lathe once you've set it up correctly.

lift. will likely be used more often and the convenience is far higher.

Lift. I'm old too and the floor is cold.

I don't own either but I find myself wanting a lift more than a Mill. I will grant you I am not very experienced on a Mill so that might skew my results.

Lift. No question in my mind, once you work with a lift it's agonizing when you don't have one around. Once you work with a mill, when you don't have one around you just find a friend who does or take the rare job to a shop. A lift is a one time cost. A mill will keep costing you money as you want to "grow" with it (kind of like cameras, guns, etc...you'll always want another doodad for it).

Bryce

How many days out of the month will you use a lift v a mill?

and should you buy a mill how much harder is it to find a lift to utilize and the flip side of the coin is if you choose a lift how easy would it be to find a machine shop to do your mill work...

I vote lift.