No. 1 Arbor Press

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Joined
Nov 27, 2017
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Location
Woodinville, WA
I'm looking for a small arbor press for my home shop for light use, mostly press fits. I usually just use a vise but that doesn't work for everything. Has anyone bought one of these Chinesium arbor presses? The ones I am seeing on fleabay are black with either No. 0 or No. 1 in red cast in the frame and are rated 1/2 ton and 1 ton respectively and seem to run around $60 or so including shipping for either. They look pretty rough in the pictures. Alternatively, I can go with Horror Freight. From what I've read about the HF units is they will work OK if you get all the pieces in the box and if you spend some time cleaning up the moving parts, possibly replace the handle, and don't believe the 1 ton rating.

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I have a HF and it seems to work pretty good. I would buy it again if i had to. Only use it occasionally.
 
I got one of the small HF units (1/2 Ton) and put a lot of work into it to make it smooth and I also made it so I could change from pressing to tap-guiding. The project is still not finished the way I intended as life events have kept me from getting much shop time.

My thought in general is that you want to get a press with enough room under the ram for higher projects, broaching, etc. Even though I have the small press as I mentioned above, I also have a hydraulic press and I am still casually looking for a larger arbor press. I would say look larger, even if you don't need it now.

HF and most of the other similar vendors will provide close to the same thing for the same price: Just OK as purchased, but can probably be improved with some amount of work. My local HF sometimes features things like this on sale, so watch carefully.
 
I have the HF press as well. would like to see how you are adapting it if you have some pictures even though it is unfinished.
 
The thread is here:

https://www.homemodelenginemachinis...arbor-press-and-adding-tapping-feature.23265/

Unfortunately, the pictures are blurred because Photo****et is holding them hostage. Like many other members I decided not to pay and I have not decided on an alternate photo-posting strategy. Also, like others, I have not revisited old posts to try to reestablish the photos.

If you read the text, you can probably get enough information from the fuzzy photos to see what I was doing. If you have more questions, please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.

--ShopShoe
 
From the reviews I have read, HF has improved the quality of their little arbor press significantly from a few years ago. Virtually all of the recent reviews have been good - out of the latest 145 reviews there were only seven 3 stars and one 1 star. The one star was from a moron as the rating was given because it wouldn't fit in his allocated area. Now this doesn't take into account if HF is manipulating the reviews by deleting bad ones.
 
Got a Famco #2 at the local steam club's president's auction for cheap (less that HF). I don't have to worry about the frame splitting if I get on it a bit (like I have heard about the Chineseum). Not sure if it was factory, but has a very heavy flywheel that allows you to hammer on the stroke if you want (like for flattening sheet metal and such). See them every now and then on Craig's List or at garage sales.

John
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