After some extreme milling adventures with my X3, I've got my compound clamp pretty near done. 1" plate does pretty good. To do it again, I'd just damn well get some 4" x 1" plate, 5" long (well, 4.7 would be dead on).
Things that I learned:
Get rougher and finishing mills with the same shank and working diameter.
Machine screw drills are sweet.
Grizzly 6" rotary table, H7527, has some issues with climb milling. Do conventional to cut, then climb for finish.
IMHO, the Sieg X3 will not happily bore >3", the rotary table and a roughing mill makes large diameters possible.
The SPI trepanning tools that might possibly fit the X3 only use the 5mm bit, and will only cut down 3/8ths of an inch.
Annular cutters are compelling for masculine machinists, but I could not justify the $70 or so for the holder, then $135 for a 2 3/8 cutter. Oh, but it would be tool gloat...
Digital scales are sweet.
Blake Co-Ax enabled me to pull the plate off the table for fitting, then put it back on the rotary table and indicate it in to less than .001 error. Not bad for a plate with a bored hole on top of a rotary table.
Keeping the bore square to the bottom surface (top surface on the mill) had me thinking. I popped in my Tri-Dex and took a pass around the top. NOTE: If you mill near a nut and make a sharp edge, it will slice you open when disassembling the setup. Ow.
I was so relieved when the clamp and the dial slid right over the mounting studs on the saddle. OCD is the way to be.