Harbor freight milling machine warning
 

I got the shop up and running roughly 4 months ago and since then I have been through 4 geared head milling machine from harbor freight. The first one the motor locked up on it. The second one the viewcap for the oil level broke off while the machine wasnt running. The third was damaged in shipping not to mention the manager swore up and down that it was fine when it left there on the back of my truck. Now the fourth one went down about an hour ago. Another view cap broke at the same time the BOTH feeds started jumping. Heres the real fun part. I purchased extended warranties on the mill and an onsite repair warranty. I called about the onsite repair and there are 5200 service centers to take care of this. There are NONE in the north ala area that will take care of this problem. Now they are saying that the mills are being ABUSED and all the will do is refund my money. So now here I am with about 5 tubers to build and no milling machine.
Enough ranting. Sorry had to vent. I found a Sharp milling machine locally but have never heard of one before. The gentleman that owns it is a longtime friend of my dad which makes me not worry quite as much. Hes asking $3200 for it Does anyone have any info on them. Is that a good price. The cheapest bridgeport I have found is $9000. Theres no way I can afford that much now after the expense of the shop and other equipment

well i would never buy any power tools from harbor freight. if you havent noticed they are the cheapest place. we bought a bench grinder from tower and later that day it almost caught our house on fire, and now that i think about it we probably could have goten some money off of that. i was grinding the end of the links i was making and all the sudden i see blue sparks fly everywhere and smoke pouring nonstop out of it even after it was shut off and unplugged.

Don't know which one you got from them, but we have been abusing this one for several years at the shop and it has held up fine.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=42827

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/pho...2899/42827.gif

Thats the one rite there Jason :lol: . How the F*** do you abuse a piece of machinery like that milling aluminum. Not to mention having to load that 734 lb mother from my work bench to the bed of my truck, then driving to take the thing back to harbor freight when I have a onsite repair warranty that cost $229 that isnt wort a flying rats ***. Kinda of reminds me of the three stooges episode with the lawyers. Dewey Cheatum and Howe. :evil:

Sharp mills are Bridgeport clones. Nice machines.

I'm 99% sure it will be 3-phase power. Do you have 3-phase? You can make 3-phase with a converter but it's added expense.

Also make sure it's not 440 3phase... You can make 220 3-phase.

Thanks for the info ace. Its 220 three phase and I have that covered luckily. Going to look at it tomorrow afternoon. And I was complaining about loading up the hf mills. :lol: Now its go borrow the money to purchase a the new mill and getting it set up in the shop, then load the existing one up and driving 7 hours round trip to return it and get my money back.

The toolmakers at work all have sharp mills. They seem to turn out great work on them...

I suspect that even a worn out Sharp BP clone will be about 1,000,000% better than a HF mill!

"driving 7 hours round trip"



What part of north bama you in? I assume you got it at H'ville?

I am 30 south of Huntsville but got the last mill from chattanooga and have to return it there. Thats the only place that had one in stock.
I missed the sharp mill. Some spoke up wanting it before I could but I found a bridgeport in huntsville that i'm going to get. $4000 for it isnt too bad for it compared to some of the prices I have been getting lately.