Brad Brigade wrote in message . ..
(snip)

My aim is to build a small, two-motor, autonomous robot, probably one
foot long at most, ten pounds maybe. No saw blades, or cannons, or
spiked balls, just wheels. I also would like to be able to machine
parts to modify paintball guns and other small mechanical devices.
And then, in my search for a lathe I've also come across various
examples of small steam engines and so on, built with small lathes and
mills, and I now have an itch to try that out too.

I really want to be able to make threads and gears. If I can't do
that, it's not worth it for any price. And I mean to make gears on a
mill. I'm actually in the market for a lathe AND mill, I've just been
saying lathe a lot cause I'm lazy. Sorry.

So I'm gonna back away from Sherline. Now I'm thinking of getting an
Atlas or Craftsman as suggested by Bob May, or a Grizzly 7x12. I read
somewhere that the Grizzly and Harbor Freight 7x12 were almost the
same machine, but the Grizzly has more features. So any
recommendation there?

And as for the mill. Grizzly and Harbor Freight have a mill too. Any
comments on those?

I'm hoping to spend about $2000 on a lathe, mill, and tools.

Thanks to everyone for the help, I really, really, reeeeeeally
appreciate it...

Brad,

I went through this whole process myself a few years ago. I don't have
any recommendations on specific tools, but I have some general advice:

Go to enco.com and sign up for their flyer. You'll get a new one every
month, and its always got almost all the same stuff in it month after
month, so don't be worried that you have to "act now" or miss the
sale. Anyway, the reason I say to get this flyer is so that you can
see what kind of tools/accesories are available. Lots of the stuff
that enco sells is not the best quality, but it will do for hobby use.

You don't have to buy everything at once. In fact, you probably can't.
I bought one machine and some tools to start with, then seemed to be
ordering more tools about every other month for quite some time. Its
one of those situations where you make something, then later you're
looking in a catalog and then you see *why* you might want bore gauges
or roughing endmills or whatever.

Don't buy the imported 116-pc drill set. Instead spend your money on a
good set of number drills. You can get fractional drills anywhere, and
you can go a whole lifetime without *needing* a letter drill.

Cutting threads on a lathe may not be as important as you might think.
You can also cut threads with a die. Speaking of which, Grizzly sells
an excellent HSS tap & die set for only $55. I think I use that tap
and die set on just about every project I make.

You don't need a full set of reamers. Sets are too expensive. Just buy
what sizes you need as they come up.

Get a cheap, expendable scientific calculator for the shop. You'll use
it ALL THE TIME.

You can make a lot of usefull stuff on a small lathe, but be carefull
about getting a mill that's too small. IMHO, I think that some of the
small mills on the market are just too small to be usefull. You have
to consider how you are going to attach your work to the mill's table.
Clamps, vises and rotary tables take up a lot of real estate on the
table. I really think that anything with a table less than about 7x20"
is going to be very frustrating to use.

Start going to flea markets. You never know what you might find, but
I've found something usefull (and cheap!) every time.

Make sure to also budget for some Socket Head Cap Screws with washers
and nuts. If you're making robots, you'll need a good supply of them
in a few different sizes. Keep in mind that if you buy long screws,
you can trim them down to whatever size you need. Also get an
assortment of set screws. You'll use set screws in your robots, and
you'll also need to replace set screws in many of the tools you buy
(new imported tools often come with really bad set screws, used tools
have worn-out set screws).