I think you need to do more research on hobby mills before dropping dimes on that Micromark mill, LMS
has a very similar mill with slightly larger table on the Y axis ( front to back ) but sans the table power feed
that Micromark includes in the package for about the same price.
https://www.micromark.com/Milling-Machine-R8-500W
https://littlemachineshop.com/produc...ory=1387807683
Shipping can also be a deal breaker on machine tools.
Bear in mind buying a milling machine whether it's from Micro Mark, Little Machine Shop or Grizzly and every vendor
in between them is going to be about the same ( made in the same factories, re badged, different importer manufacturing tolerances ).
It'll come down to what's the best bang for the buck in terms of capacity and accuracy, too small a mill and you'll out grow it quickly
and there is never a mill that's too big. The same goes for lathes.
Don't be swayed too much by "package" deals, the only thing I see in the Micromark package that's of good value is
the power feed for the table, you'll do much better by purchasing a better / larger capacity mill and getting the accessories separately.
As the saying goes - You can make little things on a little machine but not big things on little machines
In regards to aluminum, there are different alloys of aluminum, if your parts are not holding up
to use then I would look into getting aluminum from places that will give you specs on that alloy.
Home improvement big box stores are the worst place to get aluminum, it's practically dead soft and gummy when machined.
McMaster is a good place to start since they carry high strength 7075 aluminum.
I have a tooling plate that's 6061 aluminum that I use on my smaller mill and I have no issues
with the threaded holes in it, other than getting chips and cutting fluid gumming up the holes.
You may want to take a look at the series of video's MIT put out a few years ago for freshmen
working in the machine shop.You might be able to save a few bucks for milling accessories
rather than going to a class.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...DN3g6ZgaM0tbk7
JimC
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