[GSSTUART]

I like the spindle drive design on the 120. Its a 3 ph. motor directly driving the spindle using a toothed belt. The spindle itself easily drops out of the head by removing 3 screws. I took it out once and it appears substantial enough for the job and would be fairly simple to rebuild or ship back to Smithy to have them rebuild. The upper end of the spindle shaft is a spline and on my machine the clearance between this spline and the drive pulley it engages is greater than I would like. I can grab the milling cutter and rotate it back and forth and feel the spline moving in the pulley. I was having problems with chatter when using a 1.25" cutter (on aluminum) and I had to reduce feed and DOC to compensate. I have since stopped using the R8-ER40 collet adapter I was using for heavy cutting because the collet adapter extended the cutting tool almost 3" beyond the end of the spindle. I think that additional distance was causing a lot of flex at the cutter end. I now use 1-1/2", and 2" cutters with R8 shafts and the operation is much more rigid. I liked the ER40 collet because bit changes were quicker but for the heavy cutting it didn't pan out. All in all I am still happy with the machine. I have attached a few pictures (If I can get them loaded) to show some of what I have been doing. The black material is 3/4" thick UHMW and the others are of some Aluminum assembly jigs I made.
PS. Upload is not working right now. Will persist.