I did similar thing a few months back. My brother bought a drill press that he kept at work. It’s been there a year or two. I bought the table for it a few months back. I used it to do a few tritium slots in titanium. Shortly after that my brother finished building his house and took the drill press to his shed :_(
I’ve just got a drill press and I’m finding this thread most interesting.
I’m intending to use it for G10, Kirinite, and wood knife scales and I’m thinking that the forces involved in milling and sanding these materials would be within the limits for a cheapie drill press, I’m still buying the safety stuff like a vice and bolts, dust masks, safety glasses etc. so the milling vice is a bit in the future.
I’ve been looking at this one though, any good for light-weight work?
3 inch vice
Those all-in-1 cross slide vises are, frankly, crap. Too much backlash, too bulky except for very large machines, and the biggest drawback is that the vise jaws are fixed and sometimes you need the jaws turned 90* one way or the other to do certain jobs. I know a real X-Y table is more money, but it's worth it. Is it really saving money if you buy something that doesn't work? (trust me on this, I wasted $50 on one so you wouldn't have to)
Thank you, noted, and saved me money. 
Hi Confy. Great documentation/tutorial :-)
Before you buy some solid bar you should try the concrete pour into the tube. But before you do that you should fit some reinfocement steel in there. Makes a world of difference on the finished product. You can use almost anything. I've used olde water pipes and chichen wire/fence to reinforce small pours and steps and it does make it a LOT more stiff and less prone to cracking.
It wont cost you much and it is fast work so I thought you might try it before buying that big old expensive piece of bar stock :-)
Two years ago this thread below was the beginning of another addiction that replaced my flashlight obsession. Although BLF was not totally abandoned all extra time when into these projects.
Took me about 9 months but a total rebuild was done on this mill. Then a lathe found me. Trust me it is NEVER possible to have enough tooling for these machines. Being a “Flashoholic” was just a gateway drug to the hard stuff. You have been warned. >)
I know a bit about the heavy stuff, I used to build race engines for a living (not my own shop though, working for someone else). Just like then, it seems I spend as much time making fixtures and tooling as I do working on the actual object.
The reason I'm leaning towards replacing the column instead of concrete, well, wouldn't you pay $50 for another 3 inches? (you there, in the back, stop that snickering right now! last warning)
Looks can be deceiving. Most Harbor Freight stuff is well known for its very high coefficient of crapitude.
Hmmm all the finding the right machine, checking tolerances/backlash/ect. makes me think how this is a better deal every time I look at it…
Yeah I know if you are going to dream… Dream big. Side note I have been thinking about getting a small milling machine for a while, you know as a hobby to burn every spare penny of my kiddo’s college tuition, that flash lights, camera gear, and cars have not yet done the trick to. LOL.
Fixtures, how to get things done right vs. how to get things done right now, and replace tooling…. Not that I have ever done that, to anyone’s knowledge…
oh wow…a local machinist!
nice work, especially on using an endmill holder (MT3 taper? how's it held in?) instead of the chuck. I did much the same to my drill press, using one of those crappy but now heavily modified HF X-Y vises:
It does surprisingly decent work, within pretty major limitations. Still, it allows me to do a lot of things I couldn't otherwise do, so that's what matters. Wish mine had a rack and hand crank for the table as it's bloody heavy. I need to rig up some kind of hydraulic jack underneath to help out.
Thanx comfy! Another great thread. I too really want to know if that HF mini mill is any good. I know bout HF, just comfy seems to, sort of, perhaps, recommend it, maybe?
Actually the online reviews are pretty favorable, interesting...
On the subject of doing without proper machines, there is a series of books on building a machine shop from scrap.
http://gingerybookstore.com/index.html
Even if you have no intension of building machines from scratch There are some good examples of making precision parts without precision tools. And it’s not that much more work to start from scratch then it is to upgrade every part of a tool to make it work in ways it was never meant to.
The 'Harbor Freight mill' isn't actually anything to do with Harbor Freight, nearly all those import lathes/mills are made by Seig, rebranded to suit by the resellers. http://www.mini-lathe.com/Mini_mill/Versions/versions.htm
Upgrade parts that fit one will fit the others, the minor differences between them, if any, are all in the replaceable parts. Paying more for one from someplace like LittleMachineShop just means they have specced the machine built for them by the OEM to use higher quality parts where the bargain-basement versions might have skimped a bit to get the price down to the minimum. A bargain-basement model with the upgrade/replacement parts from LMS will end up being the same machine as the more expensive one (a possible benefit of buying the cheaper one and then upgrading it is that you'll still have the original parts as spares if/when something goes wrong).
After lusting after a lathe for so long I'm coming around to the reality that a mill (or something that can do mill-like operations) is more useful more often than a lathe. I'm still going to get a lathe eventually though, next time HF offers another store-wide 20% off coupon and I have a spare ~400. The 7x10 comes out to $399 with the 20% off coupon.
After I replace/reinforce my drill press column, I guess the next weak point will be the lame JT33 spindle taper, which I can't do anything about since it's a 1-piece shaft. I used it for a while with a cheap Shars 1/2" keyless chuck, but the taper is too small and it doesn't engage enough of the shaft, hence it's prone to falling off. It also doesn't help that the overall length is about double that of the standard 1/2" keyed chuck, which just doubles the leverage applied at the spindle taper. The more compact keyed chuck is the way to go (though a quality chuck would be a good investment over the cheap one that ships with the Skil, the stock chuck is garbage).
I don’t think you’ll be able avoid the problems inherent to that JT33 taper. Your best bet would be to make an end-mill holder for what ever shank end-mills you use, grind a couple of flats on the taper and use set screws (I’ve seen others do this). That’d be tough to make without a lathe, but you could possibly rough “mill lathe” the taper and then use a JT33 reamer (if available) to finish. I guess you could also somehow drill and tap the end of the spindle and secure the chuck with a bolt up through the chuck. Otherwise you’ll always be at risk of knocking the chuck off and ruining a piece of work.
The keyed chucks have never fallen off, that only happened with the super-long keyless turd thing. The big end opening is only .615", and that put it too far down on the taper with not enough grip. Runout on it was pretty bad as well though I think that was unrelated to the taper thing.
never say never!
If doing this to cast iron didn't knock it off, I don't think anything will. :D
>raises arms in defeat< sure, although I’ve seen a chuck come off doing just that 
As my mum says, opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one!