Hi everyone,
Been lurking for a while, finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a CNC mill, so registering here was the first step! Hopefully you guys can help me decide...
Budget: Around $3k, give or take. Lower price will allow me to get more tooling.
Uses: Milling PCBs, making plastic parts (bezels, etc) and small metal parts in a variety of metals. It would also be nice to be able to bore engine cylinders - is that even feasible? I'm sure I will come up with more uses very soon!
Experience: This is my first venture into metalworking, unless you count my crappy drill press and dremel So I really need something fairly easy to set up (mechanically).
At first I wanted a maxnc but saw it was not highly regarded on this forum. Right now I'm torn between a MicroMill DSLS 3000 and doing an X3 conversion using either the complete syil kit or the complete promica kit.
I know the X3 is a bigger machine, which would let me do a lot more. But it will run me about $500-800 more, and probably take me forever to convert.
Ok, so down to specific questions:
1. I can't find the weight of the micromill anywhere. Is it heavy like the X3?
2. Is the micromill any good? I know everyone likes the X3
3. The micromill uses a closed loop system... looks like the X3 kits are all open loop. How important is that?
4. The micromill spindle goes from 1100-11000 RPM, the X3 is 200-3500 I believe. Which one would be better for my applications?
5. Is the syil kit or promica kit better? I read a thread discussing the two but it was from years ago and ended abruptly. Both are bolt-on, correct? How easy is it to do for a layman?
6. I like the idea of the digitizing probe... the micromill has this as an option. Is it easy to add this to a converted X3?
Sorry about the super-long first post