Alrighty...
My journey in rebuilding my X2 started with this mess:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/bencht...tml#post994685
To make a long story short, I burned up the crappy motor on my mill when the spindle bearings went out. After looking over the situation and seeing that I was down for a while, I decided the mill could use some badly needed maintenance. Here is what I did:
I got a 23" length of 8" c-channel from the local metal place to reinforce the z-axis. I probably overdid it just a tad with all the socket screws, but I figured, the more the merrier. You can see various shots of the channel installed in the pics.
I think I found the idea on Hoss's site. From what I remember, there were a few pictures of various mods that people did to stiffen the z-axis on the X2. The channel looked like the cleanest install. I looked around Hoss's site, but I can't find the pictures now.
I installed a 2hp 220v treadmill motor in place of the now very junk X2 motor. The big problem here was that I had to make the mounts using my drill press, the bandsaw, files, and an electric drill. I thought I was going to have to gnaw on it with my teeth, but it didn't get that far. Posted a pic of it installed. I used part of the mount that I had there from the belt conversion and made a couple of new pieces.
While I was replacing the motor, I installed a KB-225D motor controller and then got the controller matched to the motor. Works great.
I rebuilt the head with new bearings from McMaster that are rated at 11,000 RPMs. Had to use a press at work to get everything apart and back together, but it went good.
After getting it all back together, I checked the tram and it was within .001. I decided to leave it alone.
I also dumped all the coolant and cleaned the storage tank (lol...some "storage tank." It's a plastic bin from Walmart). Ugh. What a mess. There was slime stuff all down at the bottom. Decided to dump the coolant and make a new batch since this was originally mixed up three years ago and had coolant and water added as needed. Cleaned up the pump and it looked as good as new when done.
Finally had it ready to run about 1pm today. Clamped in a piece of 6061 aluminum and started Mach3. All I can say is:
WOW!!! WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!!
With the old motor and no back reinforcement, I could probably run .010-.020 cuts in 6061. Today, I cut my part at .040 depth and I think I could have gone to .050 or more. The .040 wasn't giving it any trouble. I had the spindle running at around 4500 RPMs using a .250" carbide 3-flute end mill. The first part I cut before the mill went down took about 1.5 hours. The last part I cut after reconfiguring my g-code took about a half hour.
I included a shot of my motor covers. They are plastic store bins that I found at Menards. When I first saw them, I thought they looked really close in size for the NEMA 23 motors. They were an almost perfect fit. Just had to trim out the back and drill and tap a couple of mounting holes in the motor mounts. I lined each cover with self-stick weatherstrip tape to keep coolant from leaking through.
I have another motor coming for this. The one installed is for CCW rotation, but I have it running CW. I found a CW rotation treadmill motor on ebay and bought it last week. Hopefully it will show up here soon.
Thanks to everyone that has given me advice so far.
Mike