# New mill



## hacklordsniper (Sep 25, 2014)

It arrived today, when i uncrated it i tought that there is no way i will ever get it inside trough steps and ordinary small door. It is really, really big compared to my old BF20 which was carried by me and my brother. Luckily i have a brilliant father, a jack of all trades who got it in the shop with nothing more than brain power and few primitive tools and without even a tiny scratch.

For now all is looking good and here are current faults i found, some are quite terrible:

1. 3xM5 screws hold the control panel, and one thread was stripped and screw was cleverly glued inside. However it fell out to halfway in shipping. I tapped to M6 and fixed it
2. Found 2 springs and plastic cap that fell off from somewhee, will need to ask manufacturer
3. Rubber way cover on Y axis was cut wrong, broken and then just tucked away like nothing happened
4. Someone forgot to apply anti corosive protection to underside of table and on X axis dovetails and it rusted very badly, any sugestions? Was able to remove alot of rust by rubbing with oil for an hour.


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## Swifty (Sep 25, 2014)

It's a shame about the minor problems, it's a nice looking mill.

Paul.


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## kadora (Sep 25, 2014)

three months ago I bought brand new Optimum BF 20 mill
i am absolutely happy with./i found only two unfasten screws/
I have Christmas in September.


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## Omnimill (Sep 26, 2014)

Nice looking Mill!


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## gus (Sep 26, 2014)

I am very envious. Poor Gus restricted to mini mill with the balcony machineshop.:rant::hDe::wall:

Congrats for having bought a new good size mill. th_wav


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## hacklordsniper (Sep 27, 2014)

Dont envy me yet guys, seems this mill is full of problems...

1. I proceded to adjust gibs and tried to lift mill head with power feed, it worked for a second. Someone forgot to install a lock screw to the gear that connects the motor and leadscrew, so gear just fallen down. Disasembled, screw inserted in place and now its ok.

2. I proceeded to adjust gibs, Z axis gib cannot be adjusted, when its fully pushed (its a tapered gib) it fells down trough space between ways and mill head. It seems gib is simply to small. Made micrometer readings of gib dimensions and sent to manufacturer to check.

3. Decided to let mill run little so bearings would "run in". It worked nicely few minuttes but motor sounded little rough. Then circuit breakers blew and i was left in the dark. The motor died taking with himself the brushless motor inverter  

Waiting for replacemnt parts...


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## Lathejack (Sep 27, 2014)

Oh dear oh dear, that's not at all a good start to owning a new machine. The faults you have with the new mill are quite bad, I hope the factory it came from that assembled it put everything right for you.

I hope the new lathe you are expecting to arrive is a lot better, particularly if it is being assembled by the same company, a lathe is usually quite a bit more complex than a mill so there is so much more they can make a mess of.

It's a shame that some of the Chinese companies produce some of their machines like this, but it's the way it is for the price we pay for them. When they are put together reasonably well, and without faulty components, they can be great machines. But with some of them it's a bit of a risk when buying because they are so inconsistent, so you never know exactly what the machine you get is going to be like.

About ten years ago I bought a new 13x30 geared head lathe from Warco here in the UK, and you won't believe how bad they were. Despite ordering and paying full price for a new one, they stitched me up and still sent me a two and a half year old ex demo/display machine in a horrendous mechanical state. It had a corroded and slightly worn bed on which sand paper had been rubbed in places, and with horrifically rusted headstock internals, it left deep ridges in the workpiece when turning and shook badly at 750 RPM. Even the two tapered dowels were missing that locate the bed gap piece in place.

When they finally replaced it with a new one it was much better but still had similar faults, plus other serious unfixable manufacturing faults that were not discovered until after the warranty had expired. All the bearings in the headstock of this machine were damaged with corrosion and had to be replaced by me, and all the internal gears were rusty around half their circumference. The factory assembles them and then leaves the headstock covers off for some time allowing moisture to get in and ruin everything, then without a care they pack them all up and send them off to the customer.

The amount of foundry sand and machining swarf left in the headstock, apron and screwcutting gearbox had to be seen to be believed. They use hand drills to drill some of the holes in the apron after it has been fitted to the lathe complete with all the internal gears, as well as all the swarf produced and left inside they had also run the drill bit into some of the gears as they break through the casting walls and damaged the gear teeth.

Anyway, despite these horrors I still like some Chinese machinery and it hasn't totally put me off them, I even plan to buy some more.

I hope things turn out alright in the end for you Hacklordsniper.


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## gus (Sep 28, 2014)

Hi LatheJack,

Same applied to ''Made in Taiwan'' machines wayback in the early 70s.Friend of mine bought a 6 footer Engine Lathe which ran well and good for 6 months and after that all things came loose.
Jibs on all slides had to be retightened and thread/feed gears replaced. Noise came down.

Saw these lathes operating in Taiwan when I was there auditing suppliers for Ingersoll-Rand and asked same questions on quality.Lathe builders came in and made good all defects and subsequent production lathe vastly improved.

M.I.C.  CNC Lathes are usable though not as good as Taiwan's but much cheaper and this was as informed by Chinese parts suppliers Gus was auditing.

In the next 5---10 years,we can expect M.I.C. mini lathes and tools to cost more when quality improved. My Japanese Sakai Mini Lathe cost three times more the M.I.C.'s. After 10 years my
Japanese mini mill and lathe is still good. Slides adjusted and belts changed.

Seen some prewar and WW-2 lathes running in Malaysia and still good.


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## hacklordsniper (Sep 29, 2014)

Thank you for nice comments Lathejack. Unfortunately the sad part is that the parts are machined nicely and made nicely, but the machine was assembled by someone reminding me of Pat&Mat characters. . But i wonder with this Z-axis gib how did they make the test report delivered with machine? Some runouts could definately not be recorded without a gib on z-axis.

I also noticed many of the cast iron dust and swarf. The paste they used on leadscrews looks like 50-50 % mix of cast iron dust and grease. In my last lathe i found a broken tap in gearbox and few large spoons of cast iron swarf swimming in oil. 

My new lathe is manufactured by Weiss (same like last one, that had many problem). But this time a great guy in Weiss mr. Alex Stone is personally inspecting build of my lathe every week (and he is a brilliant machinists and old Inspector for JET and some others). I get a picture report every week of what he found and what he requested to change, imporove, repaint, remachine... So i hope that this time my lathe will be made much better. 

Fortunately the manufacturer has agreed to send new parts for replacing but it will take some time (altrough i can "feel" they dont care much about this faults, and answer a standard "we will improve in future"). In my previous experience with Weiss in past, they are much better company to work with and i regret not buying a mill from them. 

Not to make any confusion:

Mill manufacturer: TOP TECH AKA YANGZHOU EUROBROTHER DEVELOPMENT AKA OPTIMUM MACHINES
Lathe manufacturer: WEISS


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## hacklordsniper (Oct 2, 2014)

I have to wait until hollidays in China to end so they could ship my parts. It seems the manufacturing guys left me alot of cast iron surprises, the shown pile is one of smaller ones. Luckily they left it only on less important parts like gears and sliding surfaces.

Now for the questions, is it possible to check correct gib adjustment with dial indicator? I cleaned the table and everything connected to it. I want to adjust the gibs, i know how but i dont know how much.


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## steammachine (Oct 2, 2014)

Hi hacklordsniper,

I cannot understand why you are accepting your new mill. It it were my mill, I would be asking the supplier to take it back at their expense and refund the money that I had paid immediately. I know that we have to make allowances on build quality and finish when buying far eastern machinery but at the very least you should be able to use the machine without bits falling off and the motor blowing up as soon as you start using it.

Another way of looking at things is that so long as people keep accepting shoddy goods, the manufacturers will be happy to keep churning out shoddy goods. Sending stuff back as unfit for purpose will eventually either put them out of business or make them take a good look at their quality control and manufacturing/assembly processes.

For the record, I'm not knocking Chinese/Far Eastern machinery as an alternative to comparatively expensive & better engineered European machinery. I recently bought a new Warco 1232 lathe and I'm generally very happy with the quality and accuracy of the parts I have made with it so far.

Kind regards Martin.


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## hacklordsniper (Oct 3, 2014)

Well that would be a standard procedure if the machine was bought at local or and EU supplier. They would not mind doing it, and consumer laws protect the buyers in such situations.

But this machine is bought directly from China, there is no simple way to return it (transport problem), manufacturer would not take it, there is no law protecting the end consumer in this situation. Atleas the end consumer (me) can be happy manufacturer is willing to supply spare parts


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## hacklordsniper (Oct 17, 2014)

Here is some shocking news. I asked the manufacturer have they prepared spare parts since many time has passed

I got an answer that says since i bought only 1 machine i have no right for warranty. If i want to repair my machine, i can pay for parts and shipping and they will send them. The price of brushless controller is 280 $ + shipping.

Sent a quite angry e-mail to them and got a response they will consider one more time will they provide parts free or no and will get an answer arround monday.


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