[grouchy]

Hi Cosmic,

I'm like you, I bought a cheap chinese 3040 a year ago and have really enjoyed it, you were wise to get the 800W vfd spindle, 800 bucks! My 3040 came with a wimpy 300W, which I wanted to upgrade, but the entire z axis carriage and spindle clamp is one extrusion, changing the spindle diameter is impossible. I found a 450W same diameter, then a 600W 100V but this turned out to be a piece of junk with crappy bearings. Now I overdrive the 450W with the 100V power supply, so far so good. Mach3 and Artcam express are both great, especially artcam. I thought a usb controller would be nice, I could run off my laptop, so I bought a cheapo usb to parallel port cnc card. It dropped steps. I bought a tinyG and run chilipeppr, but I couldn't stand the latency. Mach3 is the best. My original 3040 was only 650 shipping included, but I have spent at least another 1500 on spindles, electronics, tooling, and software.
I've had a lot of fun, mostly v-bit and relief on hardwood. I like it so much that I just bought and put together a inventables 1000mm X 1000mm xcarve to do larger hd urethane and mdf. I also went with mach3 and parallel port driver, I bought an old laptop to run it.

Have fun!

[phuang3]

My 3040 came with a wimpy 300W, which I wanted to upgrade, but the entire z axis carriage and spindle clamp is one extrusion, changing the spindle diameter is impossible.
Have fun!

You may ask the seller for an upgrade. The specific spindle clamp (let's say 80mm) of your machine is the most important. Once you have it, you can use up to 2.2KW spindle motor. BTW, you need to upgrade the inverter also.