Hello,
I am interested in building a small CNC mill for hobby use so I bought a Harbor Freight mini mill as a starting point. I just got it uncrated and am wondering if I picked the right machine. I have cleaned it up and begun going over the mill. The spindle and chuck run pretty true, maybe 0.001" of runout with no perceptible axial or radial play in the bearings. The table's X-axis is smooth and firm, seems good. The Y-axis makes a knocking sound once per revolution and it gets looser as the table moves inward toward the main column. The Z-axis seems almost unusable. The fine Z-control is very stiff to turn, I wonder if a stepper motor could even turn it. I realize that for $500 you can't expect too much, but I do want to build a functioning machine. The motor spins up fine and the gears are noisy as expected. Before investing another $500+ in CNC upgrade I need to decide if this is the right machine to move ahead with. What do you think?
...j