[itsme]

Hi there,

As mentioned in another thread, I have got 254ozin motors on my X1. They are running in unipolar mode (like the HobbyCNC), so torque will be down a bit on 254ozin. When I converted mine, I used toothed belt drives from the motors to the leadscrews. I used a 1:1 ratio and the main reason why I used belts was to completely eliminate any alignment issues with couplings. Each leadscrew is supported by two angular contact ball bearings (also available from Arc Euro Trade).

I am getting rapids of 1500mm/min (60 IPM), which I think is quite good. I normally cut aluminium with a 6mm endmill at about 400mm/min, depth of cut around 0.5mm and 100% stepover. This is not pushing the machine to the limit, but I am comfortable with it at these settings. With steel, I keep everything the same, except drop the feedrate to about 140mm/min. I have also substituted the 6mm cutter with a 10mm cutter and it worked fine, however I prefer the smaller cutters.

By the way, this is all with the standard spindle, which is only capable of 2000 RPM - not that great for CNC. You can get a belt drive conversion which takes the speed up to 8000 RPM. This should improve cutting speeds quite a bit.

Regards
Warren