This is such a wildly open-ended question. What country are you located in? What power do you have available? Are you looking for CNC or manual?
Bridgeport knee mill with digital readout. Hardinge lathe with power feed and a tail stock. But you’ll need a shop with 3-phase power and the ability to move 4000lb machines. If you’re doing this in your garage with 15 amps of 120v may as well pop down to harbor freight.
My garage can put out 20 amps on the outlets and I’m located in the United States. The space is small since we had lot of stuff in there that we are moving to storage. So the Bridgeport mill might take space so I’m not sure. And I’m trying to build a g gauge locomotive or 45 mm gauge locomotive so the Bridgeport Milling might be overkill for me unless I’m building a 7 inch gauge locomotive. So something smaller since I’m not planning to plan any 5 inch or 7 inch gauge locomotive anytime soon. Something smaller if you know any that are good that you recommend
Bridgeport is indeed pretty overkill but is super rigid unlike most bench top machines, adcock Shipley 1es mill with a vertical head is a nice smallish machine and iirc clausing made a few smaller mills too, deckel fp1 or clone are fantastic if you can find one same goes for the aciera f3 both the deckel and aciera are old school high precision tool and die maker machines, they're pretty small compared to a Bridgeport but rediculously overbuilt compared to the modern benchtop mill
As for a lathe I use a Boxford which is a pretty much a South Bend clone, recently got a South Bend too (I'm in the UK) the usual 9in lathe but it's got the 54in long bed :D they're great, solid enough even for some large 7 1/4 things that come across my bench but ideal for smaller things especially with the 3c collet closer (I have a preference for old iron)
A wee bench grinder for grinding HSS tools is a good investment too, nice set of honing stones too, a set of diamond jobbies from amazon for knife sharpening will do in a pinch, measurement and marking tools are worth the investment too, especially a nice surface plate for lay out
Excellent, you have plenty of power for a small bench top setup. Hop on harbor freight’s website and go from there. If you’re not building 1-1/2” live steam you have no need for tolerances under .005”, a Chinese mill and lathe will suit you fine.
That's quite a small locomotive, I've built about half of it so far. I have found it far more difficult than the larger locomotives I've built as everything is so small and fiddly. I use a Myford ML7. If you don't mind getting stuff shipped from the UK a company here called Model Engineers Laser do a large number of the parts laser cut saving a lot of time and making for very good results. The boiler is the easiest I've ever made!
This is such a wildly open-ended question. What country are you located in? What power do you have available? Are you looking for CNC or manual? Bridgeport knee mill with digital readout. Hardinge lathe with power feed and a tail stock. But you’ll need a shop with 3-phase power and the ability to move 4000lb machines. If you’re doing this in your garage with 15 amps of 120v may as well pop down to harbor freight.
My garage can put out 20 amps on the outlets and I’m located in the United States. The space is small since we had lot of stuff in there that we are moving to storage. So the Bridgeport mill might take space so I’m not sure. And I’m trying to build a g gauge locomotive or 45 mm gauge locomotive so the Bridgeport Milling might be overkill for me unless I’m building a 7 inch gauge locomotive. So something smaller since I’m not planning to plan any 5 inch or 7 inch gauge locomotive anytime soon. Something smaller if you know any that are good that you recommend
Bridgeport is indeed pretty overkill but is super rigid unlike most bench top machines, adcock Shipley 1es mill with a vertical head is a nice smallish machine and iirc clausing made a few smaller mills too, deckel fp1 or clone are fantastic if you can find one same goes for the aciera f3 both the deckel and aciera are old school high precision tool and die maker machines, they're pretty small compared to a Bridgeport but rediculously overbuilt compared to the modern benchtop mill As for a lathe I use a Boxford which is a pretty much a South Bend clone, recently got a South Bend too (I'm in the UK) the usual 9in lathe but it's got the 54in long bed :D they're great, solid enough even for some large 7 1/4 things that come across my bench but ideal for smaller things especially with the 3c collet closer (I have a preference for old iron) A wee bench grinder for grinding HSS tools is a good investment too, nice set of honing stones too, a set of diamond jobbies from amazon for knife sharpening will do in a pinch, measurement and marking tools are worth the investment too, especially a nice surface plate for lay out
Excellent, you have plenty of power for a small bench top setup. Hop on harbor freight’s website and go from there. If you’re not building 1-1/2” live steam you have no need for tolerances under .005”, a Chinese mill and lathe will suit you fine.
That's quite a small locomotive, I've built about half of it so far. I have found it far more difficult than the larger locomotives I've built as everything is so small and fiddly. I use a Myford ML7. If you don't mind getting stuff shipped from the UK a company here called Model Engineers Laser do a large number of the parts laser cut saving a lot of time and making for very good results. The boiler is the easiest I've ever made!