Hi Everyone,
I saw G59's post earlier and I've finally managed to find some time to chime in. I've been up 24hrs, so hopefully, I'll stay awake long enough to post this.

First off.....let me say that I have absolutely NO regrets or second thoughts about purchasing the Pro!!!!!!!!!! None whatsoever!!!

I gave everything in this thread a quick read and it looked like everything was pretty darn accurate. I'd like to thank the guys that stepped in and helped to explain my position. I figure I'm the one that caused most of G59's question since Dan custom ordered his specifically to mod..........so......I'll throw in my 2 cents to help clarify my point of view.

When I ordered the Pro, I explained that I'd be doing video on everything I did with the machine. Neither of us expected most of this. I'm hoping they have a chance to view all the vids. It's not my intention at all to cast a shadow on Novakon. If some of this is stuff they're not aware of, then the vids will help them get it fixed. If mine is a "friday" machine(friday in China)....it still helps. I know a sound a bit frustrated or disappointed in a few places in a couple vids, but it still hasn't caused me any second guessing on the decision to get the Pro. I don't think I'll ever be quite as "pumped" as Kelvin in a vid(I love his style, but it's not quite me), but I'm still very much "pro" Novakon. I can see how a potential customer might jump into the middle of one of the vids and only see the down side.......so, I'd seriously consider taking some of them down if they(Novakon) think they're negatively biased. I've simply been trying to show what I've been doing. Whether or not it's been entirely necessary is questionable. I've talked to quite a few guys that started running them out of the box with no issues. Since posting some of these vids, I've gotten feedback from some guys saying that they purged their ball screws with the oiler by running about a half quart of oil through it then ran a warm up routine for an hour or so. I would have loved to have found that info before I got my machine!!! LOL!

As mentioned......I'm a complete beginner to cnc. I took out a loan on my retirement so I was able to by the Pro with servos and some fun extra toys to go with it. If I never make a dime with it, it's okay.....but I would like to make some money with it sometime. I think it's pretty accurate to say that a lot of what I've done has been because I didn't know whether I should or shouldn't worry about it. I didn't need to put the machine into production right away, so I figured this was the best time to dig into anything that I wasn't sure about. As a beginner, I have no clue if this kind of prep is typical, but I haven't found anything to suggest it is....or that it's even necessary. When I bought my round column mill from HF, I knew I was going to have to tear it completely down and clean all the cosmoline off/out of it. If this is typically prep, I would have liked to have some heads up about it. It's not quite what I was expecting to do, but if it's the price of admission, it's worth it.

I did want to get into quite a bit of detail in the videos...and there's more to come, but I hope that anything that's a bit "off" will be viewed as a potential heads up and not any kind of deterrent. I'm showing angles and areas of the machine that aren't shown anywhere else. I'm hoping that viewers will see the guts laid out and see it for what it is, an awesome piece of equipment. If they think "To bad this moron owns it," ......I'm okay with that

I'm starting to get a bit loopy. I think there's some more I wanted to cover.....maybe I'll remember it tomorrow. Hopefully, the spelling and grammar hasn't been too bad.....too tired to proof read right now.

Let me say this before I go.........even if I had to do twice as much work, necessary or not......I'd still buy the Pro without hesitation because in the end, I'll still have the biggest, fastest, strongest mill in price range.

Thanks for listening!!!!
Mike