Well, I've been "machining" now for about 5 months. I bought my 10" x 18" Craftex lathe in March of 2008, and my CT129 Craftex mill in mid June. I must say that I like the machines very much, and that they perform very well from this novices point of view. I have just completed my third running model steam engine, and although I have for all intents and purposes not machined much of anything before this year, here is what I find:#1-Probably the most difficult thing I have tried to do is to cut threads. I know the theory, my machine does have a thread dial, and I was able to solve the mystery of what "change gears" are and how to use them. Did I succesfully cut threads???---No!!! I only tried a couple of times, but since it was one of many "lets try this and see what happens" exercises, I left it and went on to other things---(a note here--the slowest my machine will go is 115 RPM---some feel that even that is too fast for thread cutting.). I have mastered the secrets of turning to a finished diameter, boring to a finished inner diameter, drilling with the tailstock mounted chuck, and reaming. I have pretty well sorted out the "feeds and speeds" thing, and can with some degree of success measure a part in the lathe, subtract the amount (diameter) that I want to end up with, and divide it by the number of thousandths that my cutting tool will remove from the diameter of a peice being turned when I advance the tool by one "unit" as marked on the feed dials. I have used the 3 jaw chuck a lot, the 4 jaw chuck a bit, and turned between centers with a faceplate and lathe dog. As for milling, well, I have found out that 4 flute end mills don't plunge cut worth a darn (just as everone told me)---that trying to cut with the endmill revolving the wrong way can result in some spectacular and startling crashes, and that even when the machine is turned off, to quit reaching in with my hand under the cutter (and I have the scars on my knuckles to prove it.)---I have found that if you dare to ask an opinion about what type of milling vice to use you will get 600 opinions and probably start a range war. I did buy a rather horribly expensive rotary table and a bed mounted tailstock to go with it, and have used it once.---It works exactly as the machining books say it will, and some day I may find more use for it. My battery operated edge finder does work, and works very well, but without a digital read out system on the bed of my mill, you end up doing most things "by guess or by God" anyways, which renders the edge finder rather useless.--I do really like and use the digital readout on the quill travel. The most difficult thing that I deal with is trying to keep things square and parallel in the mill. I do have a good set of parallels, but they are almost always a bit too wide or a bit too narrow for the part I am milling. I always give whatever is in the milling vice a whack with a small dead blow hammer to set it down tight against the parallels after the vice is tightened, but even so, some of my parts are pretty "fishy" when it comes to parallelism of two opposing sides. I use the mill mounted chuck a fair fit for drilling and reaming, and other than the fact that the chuck is kind of a cheap darn thing, I haven't experienced any problems with it.---My mill really doesn't like drilling anything much with a drill larger than 1/2" diameter---I have a box full of blown fuses to prove that!!!---Brian
