A mill is definately necessary. Of the parts I show above, only the beer can (and the brass pulley on the alternator) can be made using a lathe alone. The plenums, pedals and shifter gate were made using only a mill, and the alternator and brake rotor required lathe, mill and rotary table. In full size machine shops, the lathe is really considered a supliment to the mill, and is generally used about half as much as the mill. In automotive modeling I use them probably closer to 50/50, but I only rarely make anything on the lathe that doesn't also get milled, too. On the other hand it's not uncommon for me to make something on the mill that doesn't get put on the lathe at all.
I started out opposite from Gio- I got my lathe first. I had it at least a year before I got the accesories to convert it to a mill also. I hardly touched it- there just wasn't that much I could make with it, and I was kicking myself for buying this expensive bench ornament. So I threw some more money at it (about $200-$300 for the milling accesories), and suddenly it was usefull. Only then did machined parts start appearing on my models. Finally last year I got a rotary table, and I use it all now 3x as much as I did before. A lathe, mill and rotary table is a truely potent combination- with them you can make
anything (including more lathes, mills and rotary tables).
On Sherline tools it's nice that getting a lathe and some components to convert it to a mill is a real option- it easily saves $500 or so to start with. You can then upgrade to a full mill later if you choose. In making parts for modeling I really haven't had the need to upgrade. A separate mill would save me some time and a little effort, but it would give me almost nothing in additional capabilities (that I would use). There's nothing in 1/24 (or even 1/12) that I haven't been able to do with this setup. I might be hard pressed to build a small working steam engine (which
many people do on Sherline and larger tools), but I haven't tried- I've been too busy having fun making really tiny stuff.
As for How-to's, I try sometimes to show some steps in making parts, but it doesn't lend itself well to How-to's; nearly everything I make is different from stuff I've made before, and therefore made in different ways. It's also obnoxiously difficult to photograph. But if you follow my threads (particularly the Mythos), you may learn something. I'll keep trying to include more and more machining steps in my threads.
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Originally Posted by white97ex
that beer can is too cool
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Cheers!
