Peter, I fancied doing an X1 for my daughter to replace the Taig mill, at ally Pally about 3 years ago there was a guy selling ballscrew's off [ don't laugh ] hospital beds. Seems they had to swap these every so often and most had never been used.
He wanted £25 each for them and they were just long enough to do the X on a long series X1, I wanted 4, three for the mill and one for a Z axis on a small lathe.
Alan from Arc wanted 3, another guy at the show was converting his X1 and wanted 3 and I rang another guy and he said yes to 3 if we could get a decent price, so finished up buying 15 all together for £12.00 each.

They just fitted under the bed with about 1/16" milled off the bottom.

It made a nice machine but I sold it to make a bit of room when I knew the KX prototype was on it's way over from China.

Never saw the guy with the ballscrew's again but stopped doing Ally pally now anyway, too expensive to stand there.

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