Palmgren XY table quality?

[BEARINGMAN]

Has anyone had experience with the Palmgren MCT18 x-y table? It has 12x8 travel, and looks good for a design I'm working on for a mill. The Palmgren people are great to work with, even sent dfx prints of the table and all the parts, but I noticed that the prints are Chinese. My design will be cast polymer (epoxy) granite, and mic-6 aluminum. will post progress reports when the design is finalized.

[dcprecision]

I think that the Palmgren table and the less expensive copies may both be made in china. Possibly the palmgren may have better QC and materials because it is about $ 80 more. I purchased a Chinese no name brand version of it and have mixed feelings. My experience is that you definitly have to modify and change out lead screws and alter nut mounting methods. The matching angles of the table dovetails could be a whole lot better. It did respond to lapping all sliding surfaces pretty well but after lapping, you can see the extent of dovetail mismatch by the surface contact areas that polished out. This does not cause horizontal or axial play when adjusted but vertical slop is present and difficult to get rid of. I am sure it definitly affects overall rigidness. What is really bad is the gib quality, just garbage metal with a quick mill pass finish. I may replace them with ground flat stock. However, I now think that I may ultimatly use the T-slot table only by milling the bottom flat and attaching a base plate with linear bearings then adding a Y axis of my own design using linears also. The Chinese table alone was worth the $110 to me if I use it as such and I can also increase the travel a bit in both directions. If I had paid over $ 200 for this quality level, I would be very disappointed. With Palmgren, are you just paying extra for the name???? Its a crap shoot...........

[cncuser1]

It is a fair sized table, 12x8. You may be tempted to do heavy cutting ( lets say 1/2 dia cutter in steel)

The overall heaght of the assembly seems a little high to me. In otherwords the total distance from the applied force of the cutter to the re-active force at the table base seems big and therefore prone to flex.

This is a totally different issue made in the other post.
I have a couple of palmgren vices that are a half step above the usual chinese stuff.

If you are thinking about making a milling machine for metal then the X2 is decent value for money. If you are thinking about making a milling machine for metal then consider buying an X2 and improving it rather that building from scratch, IMHO.

I think that the spindlle assembly, with the motor and speed controler provided the best value in the machine. Consider buying it as a separate assembly from LMS.

[fignoggle]

i bought a phase2 version a while back and upon adjusting the gib set screw, it broke off. just put it in a drawer until recently - will be using this as a t-slot option for a cnc mill being built.

will put up some pictures later. possibly the worst item from phase2 ever!