Hi all; thanks again for the help with the electronics and mechanics choice for my X2 CNC conversion process. I've ordered all but the limit switches and the e-stop and I'll be snagging those soon. Now I have a few general questions...
1) Should I trammel the mill fully before I install the CNC kit? It seems like I should wait, but trammeling is a black art to me and I'm not sure what will knock things out of alignment. I've got the great tutorials people have put online so I think I'll be ok doing it, just not sure when is the best time. I even kicked together a surface ground 8" diameter disk in my machining class that supposedly makes trammeling easier.
2) Where are people getting these tiny shims used in trammeling? I assume it's something obvious as no one ever mentions it but I wanted to ask. Are they just thin sheet metal or something like it?
3) What size do the t-slot nuts need to be for the Harbor Freight X2? I have a clamping kit but I got the wrong t-slot nuts for it and they don't fit. I figured I'd just buy the nuts from LMS directly.
4) I need to cut out a series of 2d shapes from 1/4" and 1/8" mild steel. Lots of them actually - I got really popular with some friends when I told them I was finally going CNC. I will be picking steel with a good machinability index. What end mill or bit do you guys typically use on an X2 to cut parts out? It's a stupid question but one I'm very curious about. Since I'm still on the stock gears, I don't have a ton of RPM to work with so I can't use something tiny. I don't have really fine detail on these parts so I'm pretty open to sizes, it's just I've never seen anyone talk about what size end mills are used for cutting parts out. Generally I just use whatever end-mill has a small enough radius for the finest detail but with CNC I thought it might be different.
5) I've seen people reference onlinemetalsupply.com and speedymetals.com are these the prefered online sources for materials? They are both very inexpensive compared to my local supplier.
6) Last question (for now ) - I've seen quite a few different ways to reinforce the z-axis to take the flex out and remove the rotation ability. Is there a preferred one? For every suggested approach, I've seen several detractors. The one that looked simplest and effective to me was a c-channel bolted vertically from top to bottom against the back of the mill. Seems it would provide both side to side and front to back stability but there was a lot of discussion about it not being ideal though testing showed it worked well enough. The original was in aluminum, but I'd likely use steel as I have some channel lying around already. Just wanted to know peoples thoughts on this.
Thanks again for all the great help!
Mike