My new X4+

[matteo]

I did it!

I bought an X4+ 2 weeks ago. I ordered it on a Monday morning with some endmills. I'm in San Diego (The mill comes from Oregon) and received it on Friday afternoon. The endmill set that I ordered at the same time took two weeks to get here.

I’ve been reading up on this and other mills as much as I could. There is just not much out there for this mill. I now think it’s my turn to add a little to the knowledge pool for the Syil X4 mill.

It came in a nice enough wood crate that did its job in protecting it.
I'm in a bit of a rush to actually make parts. I'm not a machinist, I'm a Mechanical Engineer. I haven't run a mill in 6 years, and I've never driven a manual mill. I was able to get it out of my truck by myself, and put it on a table. The table is a mobile ~4.5' x 4.5' 8020 frame of extruded aluminum. Its long term plans will have the X4+, a small lathe, grinder/deburing wheel, belt sander, tool boxes, and material storage; all in one compact portable unit that will run off a standard 110VAC generator if needed.
Back to the Mill, I was able to clean it up and have it running by Saturday. On Monday I had all of my tools from Enco and Grizzly. From there I was able to hand write all the G-code needed for my parts. 8 days later I made 8 fairly complicated parts. The parts needed to be flipped multiple times, and 6 different tools were used.
Overall, I'm really pleased with this inexpensive machine. I was able to go from ordering it to first part in ~9 days.
I did order it with the Flood Coolant system. And to be honest I haven’t opened any of that stuff up yet. The Flood Coolant comes in a Harbor Freight box, and I don't really know what it consists of.
I was surprised to see that it did come with a keyed drill chuck, a set of metric wrenches, a spanner wrench to hold the spindle while changing tools, a really simple manual, a Mach3 cd-rom, and a screw driver. It take an 8mm allen wrench to tighten and loosen the draw bar, but I don’t think it came with one of those

Getting the machine running; the MPG works great in manual mode, although I don't see using it much. It will not cut very well since you can't control the feed rate so well. It also is useless in setting up your programs since MACH3 doesn't know that you are moving the table with the MPG. The limit switches are not really limit switches, so you have to be careful. I guess they are more of soft limit switches and homing switches for the MACH3 controller. The physical properties of the limit switches have a lot to be desired. The X-axis is non adjustable and is not very close to the travel limits. And on the far right "limit bolt" the factory must have drilled the hole too low, so they had to grind the bolt to get the switch to work. The Y-axis is adjustable, not a clean system either, but it does seem to work. The Z-axis is completely hidden and I have been too busy to inspect them. They work, so I'm not going to go looking for problems right now. Since the limit switches don't do anything in manual mode its easy to over travel. Over travel in certain directions/axis either end in the motor stalling or bending sheet metal guard on the motor covers.

Running with MACH3; that is a great program! I loaded up the X4+ configuration and most of it was great. I did have a problem with the max velocities & accelerations. They were set up way too fast and there were steps lost some where while running at these speeds. I backed them way off, and now the machine moves much smoother. Most of my stuff will be well below RAPID speeds anyway...
The configuration of the limit switches was also way off. 10 minutes of measuring and carefully moving the table to its true physical limits fixes this.
I would like to get the MPG wired into the MACH3 soon and am following that thread on CNCZONE.com

I have not check the various adjustments yet for backlash etc. It seems to do an alright job cutting aluminum, especially for its size. I can cut full width at 3ipm .125dp with a roughing 1/2FEM @ 1600rpm (and 6ipm @50% cutter width). With a regular endmill, 2 or 4 flute it will do some shaking. I can get it done by taking less material per pass. I have only climb milled because the machine lets me and the finish is so nice. Plunging with an endmill is especially taxing for the machine. I ended up drilling pilot holes for my mill to go down into. Feed for a Center Cutting 2 flute 1/2FEM with out a pilot hole would be about 1ipm at 1600rpm. I’m sure someone will suggest a better speed/feed, but this is what I experimented with and it seems to get the job done with out too much shake/noise.

I was on the fence about just getting a manual mill and converting it sometime in the future, I was also thinking I would want only a 2 axis machine to improve the 'feel'. BUT, after owning this for 3 weeks, I will never miss turning an axis by hand. It is so nice to be able to write down the code and just run it.

The next improvements will be a fancy mist/air system to clear the chips and not make a big mess. I was thinking of a pulsed shot of oil with a constant stream of air. I should be able to control this with MACH3. I would like to get my hands on a good CAM package. I have BobCAM at work and I can't stand it. I've used Pro/MFG/NC from ProE, SolidCAM, SurfCAM, and MasterCAM. I think I'll get something that plugs directly into Solidworks.

[matteo]

One more thing,
All of the black sheet metal is powder coated with a wrinkle black finish. It looks good until you use it. After that all the little shavings get stuck in the paints texture making it hard to clean. Air doesn't even get it all out. All of the cast iron is painted a gloss yellow and that wipes clean.
Flat or gloss black paint would have been a better choice in my opinion.

[ataxy]

wow 1ipm that is really low, even the 6ipm is check this video from syil canada where it goes by the following:

• 0.300" Cut Depth
• 0.500" Cut Width
• 160 ipm Rapids in X, Y
• 70 ipm Rapids in Z
• 15 ipm Feed Rate
• 1" End Mill

X4+

[neilw20]

matteo.

Good to see you are up and going.
You mention a 110vAC generator.

Be very careful. I have repaired a few C6 lathes after they have been blown up by running on the dirty power most generators make.
I put a 10uF straight across the power leads to absorb the spikes.
Not a good fix but it worked.

Use a good quality run capacitor, rated to have full supply across it all the time. Make sure you have the system fused.

Once you set up the softlimits correctly, and the referencing offset just reference when you tunr on the machine. Get Peu's MPG adapter or make one.

My Flood system.
I don't worry about the mess or a complex splash enclosure.
I just hang some heavy rubber curtains off the head with magnets and bulldog clips. You can lift the edge and peep in occasionally.
Why would you watch grass grow?
Make sure the compound house magnet is inside the curtain so that movement does knock the hose off target.

I didn't paint my home made splash sides, so they are still smooth.
Held on with springs and has a removable front.

Happy cutting. High speed, feed till it rattles, and keep it flooded.
I am machining stainless steel and tool steel with carbide cutters.

[wrieken]

Hi,

I have been having some troubles with my x4plus. cannot seem to get the motors to run. The spindle doesn't run either.

I am talking with China now. They are struggleing with the problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Will...

[ataxy]

Originally Posted by wrieken Hi, I have been having some troubles with my x4plus. cannot seem to get the motors to run. The spindle doesn't run either. I am talking with China now. They are struggleing with the problem. Any ideas? Thanks, Will...

did you check the electonic to make sure all wire and ribbon are well connected

[wrieken]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. We have checked and rechecked the wiring and so on 4 times according to Syil diagrams.

Today Syil has sent email that tomorrow they are sending 3 replacement boards for the machine from China after we went through their diagnostics and sent many pictures of all machine wiring.

So I expect we will be up and running as soon as the new boards arrive.

Syil has given us some pretty good service.

Thanks,

Will...

[wwendorf]

You should be able to push the speeds much more than that. I have an X3 and I run it at 9 IPM, 3400 RPM, .125 DOC without a problem using a 1/2" 2 flute endmill. I use the fogbuster coolant system. I hardly use any coolant, just enough to lube things up and keep the temps down.

Wade

[matteo]

Thanks for the input! I haven't run the spindle up that high yet. I'll be sure to try those numbers.
Its hard to think about pushing the process when you have to get the part done, and don't have a large supply of cutting tools available.

[wwendorf]

Coolant is a really nice cheat, especially for aluminum. When I was testing my capabilities I started it about 4 ipm, then I just upped my % until the mill started complaining, then backed of 20%. That put me about 9ipm with a 1/2" endmill. I put a .25" endmill at 8ipm. I go down to about 3 ipm with 1/8" endmill.

As far as DOC, I usually take the diameter of the endmill and divide by 3 and use that as my DOC. That was recommended by a friend of mine and it works really well.

Wade

[neilw20]

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showpo...04&postcount=7

[ataxy]

Originally Posted by neilw20 http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showpo...04&postcount=7

yes thats more like it