Hello All,
I too have an IH mill. Got it the first part of March, lapped the ways and am using it manually until I have the coin to acquire Aaron's CNC kit. The mill is a real chunk-of-a-machine, and I like it alot.
Two points here. Lapping the ways went fine, though it is work--my bursitic shoulders complained for a week. Well, I was fortunate to attend the CNC Workshop at Cardinal Engineering where they retrofitted one of the Grizzly round-column mills. One thing I took real notice of was the out-of-the-box quality of the ways: nice looking hand scraping and smooth travel (I don't know how to guage it other than by looks and quality of travel) all with NO LAPPING. This made an impression on me.
Now, my travel is fine, but it is fine because I lapped the ways. And it's not as pretty as the scraped ways, but that's no big deal.
My second point: The gibs in the Grizzly unit were adjusted to their working position with the locking screws REMOVED. Well, the gibs in my mill REQUIRE the lock screws to be adjusted to engage the gib in order to be in the working position. If the lock screws are not engaged, the table can be slightly swiveled or rocked in the the X-Y plane with the gib adjustment screws fully screwed to the extent of the adjustment range.
The significance of this did not become apparent to me until after I returned from the workshop and was thinking about what I had observed. That is, that the locking screws are being used for a purpose not intended, and the wear is going to be concentrated on two points rather than over the full range of the gibs.
What do you folks think about this???