Well, last week I took the plunge and purchased a used machine from a forum member for a great price. He had purchased an RF-45 and wanted to move this machine to make room for that one. It's Weiss WM30 with the long table. I've looked at this as a similar class of machine to the Tormach 770 I lust after but am not going to have. I wanted something that had more Y travel than my PM-20 and more mass to take a little more cut. The fact that this would already be largely converted was a huge plus. I will not need to machine screws and make axis hardware. I love the column attachment on these machines better than the older PM-20 style. Seems much easier to bring into tram when the column bolts to the top of the base.

I'm planning to use one of Keling's 3 axis breakout/driver combos for the new control. Lot's of stuff baked in that I was trying to cobble up on my breakout and got distracted with. Spindle control 0-10V and charge-pump are built-in as well. Motors are 570oz on X/Y and a 906oz for the Z.

The shipping manifest showed it at ~580lbs and seemed to be every oz of that weight too. They fork-lifted the mill crate onto my pickup truck but to get it off I had to disassemble it on the truck and take it off a bit at a time. It's funny. It doesn't seem too much bigger till you walk back to the PM-20 after spending time with the 30. Then you clearly see the size difference. That and when my wife and I tried to move the base+table we quickly determined that wouldn't be wise. That base alone seems to weight almost as much as my current mill.

Plans are to use my exiting mill to setup for an oiling system on the new one. It will be far easier to accomplish with my PM-20 than it would have been on the old X2. I will be constructing a base from heavy lumber to support the mill and provide a better enclosure than my current shower curtain hanging from the ceiling. I also will be looking at how to convert to a belt drive. I'd really like to get at least 4000 out of it, 5000 would be nicer and worth a bearing upgrade if need be. I'd like to have a high and low gear. I know my current mill struggles with drilling at less than 2000RPM in high gear as well as facing or fly-cutting. I will also do the 3 bolt mod on this machines head casting as well.

I will also be prepping my old mil to sell. It really needs me to create some kind of enclosure for electronics and a remote E-Stop for at least the CNC drives. I now have strong motivation though. Since I would like to pay for this mill using the proceeds of the other.