| The Sieg X2 is not a milling machine. It's a drill press with an X-Y table. Milling machines have spindles built to handle heavy side loads without loss of positional accuracy. Drill presses do not. On many drill presses, if you run the spindle all the way down, you can wobble it slightly with your hand. On a mill, the spindle will not move when you try that. The spindle bearings and heavier construction required are why a mill costs much more than a drill press. There are also CNC routers. These are for wood, some plastics, and maybe machining aluminum sheet. Those are cheaper than real milling machines. However, ignore anything that tries to use a Dremel tool; you'll just burn out Dremel tools. Bottom of the line for a CNC router motor is something like a $99 Bosch router. Here's a startup that has a low-end CNC router for about $1000: https://www.inventables.com/technologies/desktop-3d-carving-... Here's an overview of low-end desktop mills: http://makezine.com/2014/03/20/desktop-mill-roundup/ The Pocket NC, if they ship it, looks interesting - that's the first 5-axis mill for hobbyists. You'll need very advanced software to run that thing. Many serious home machinists get a Sherline mill. (http://www.sherline.com/prices.htm) They have a good reputation, but it's about $2K for a rather small CNC mill. There are lots of small CNC machines on Alibaba, but quality is unknown. If there's a TechShop near you, get a membership and use their CNC mills and routers. You'll get better results than with any of the low-end machines. |
If you're going to work wood then you should be fine. For light metal it will work too (aluminum) with some slop, for steel it probably won't work unless you go real slow.
In the end the mechanics are not the biggest part of the outlay, but if you're going for cheap every little bit helps.
The Sieg is a bit better than a drill press (not much though, I'll give you that).