Sieg SX2 Plus build

[russell]

My new mill arrived last week. TNT did a good job of getting it from Leicester to Montpellier (South of France) in 40 hours but it then took them 6 days to get it the last hundred miles. However, it arrived in good condition.

Mill as received. I then stripped it down, washed everything in paraffin, and checked everything. The base was pretty good really but I blued up the surface plate and scraped it in:

The Y slide fitted pretty well despite the visually rough machined surface so I just smoothed it off a little with a diamond lap leaving just enough texture (I hope) to hold some oil.
The only fault I've found so far is the gib strips:

The photo shows a close up of one end of the X strip. The dimples are only partly formed and are such that any movement will give a wedging action and stiffen things up. I will deepen the dimples and put points on the adjusting screws (as recommended by Arc Euro) and see how they go. If they are still unsatisfactory I will then fit a dowel to prevent side to side movement.

The base is the same as the X1 rather than the X2 type. There is very little room to fit ball screws so I will make adjustable delrin nuts to fit the existing leadscrews - must try to find an M12 x 2 ACME tap.

I'm wondering what the best option is for the Z axis. There seem to be three options:
1. Lead screw at the side as with the CNC Fusion kit. Don't really like having the leadscrew so exposed.
2. Lead screw above the machine as in the Hoss conversion. However there is very little space between the motor and the column.
3. Lead screw behind column. This seems to be the neatest solution but I'm a little concerned that it may encourage the head to tend to tip and give jerky motion.
Any views on the best solution please.

All for now.

Russell.