On Friday I took advantage of Arceurotrades offer on the X2P and thought I would share my experiences with it. Although I have a large and reasonably well equipped workshop I do like to tinker about at home and this was bought for that purpose.

I went for the R8 version because I already have tooling that I can use.

I would also like to point out that this is not a rant, nor is it any kind of fit for purpose debate. If you don't like Chinese machine tools go and buy yourself a Swiss / British one.

Having got it into my workshop (the big one) I couldn't resist trying out this newfangled motor that Ketan keeps banging on about. I got a 6mm drill (not a particularly sharp one at that), a lump of en8 and drilled a couple of holes in it. Initially I set a fairly low speed thinking that I would hear it slow down as per other motor / speed controllers I have used but this wasn't the case. I then tried the same drill again but with the speed set as low as I could go and to my suprise only a small speeding up. I should also point out that I was leaning on it quite heavily. All in all a very positive start.

I know I said this wasn't a rant but what do the Chinese put into their oil to make it smell like that?

I'm hoping to make a start taking some measurements of runout etc in the next week Prior to taking it apart to clean and oiling so will post my findings.

David

Well I finally got to spend some time on the mill today. I had already stripped the table and cross slide down so it was really just a case of cleaning and checking. On the whole the only bad points were –

1) A general roughness to the machined surfaces especially the edges / corners

2) The Y axis bearing surface (above the dovetail) was a bit too rough for my liking.

My answer to this was a flat rubber block and some 600 grit wet and dry. In my case I only needed to go over it 2 or 3 times to leave the whole thing feeling much nicer. A fine file on the corners sorted them out.

The Y axis got a similar treatment. I have an old gib strip out of a shaper and by laying a strip of wet and dry on the bottom of this I was able to lightly rub off the roughness.

I put the whole thing back together with plenty of slideway oil and got my DTI out.

The front of the table is to within .02 mm over it's travel and the x and y axis are square to within .01mm over the length of my granite square (100 x 63mm).

I was initially going to take the head off but having seen the rest of it I am happy to leave it for the time being.

I did a quick test cut with a 10mm slot drill and was very impressed.

One thing I should mention here is that the T nuts supplied with the machine and in the free clamp set allow the stud to pass right through. I was told that this is a bad thing so I took a small cold chisel and put 4 small vee's across the bottom of each one.

My overall feeling so far is that this is a very good machine for its size. I know that there are people out there who would say that I shouldn't have to fettle it myself but I would rather do that myself than pay Sieg to do it for me.

I can already see a number of things that I would like to add / change but am going to live with it for a while before I do any of them.

I will try and add to this as I use the machine more.

Regards.

David.