Xmas gift from Grizz: the Super X3 is now available in US

They posted the SX3 on 25th.

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Me thinks that the ideal hobby mill has now officially arrived.

The most important different from "regular" X3 is direct belt drive from motor to the spindle, via cogged belt. Jury is still out on the torque (as there's no more 1/2 reduction gears), for when one wants to drill 1 1/2" hole :) Gone is gear noise and may be some of vibrations.

head tilts L/R up to 90' (90' and 0' are indexed), no need to tram every time you tilt it.

Motor is now hidden inside of the head, Grizz rates it @ 1HP. When mine comes in somewhere in Feb, I shall see if there's nuff power. Replacing it it with a different motor seems to be rather trivial (VFD 3 phase or one of those treadmill gems I used for my lathe conversion).

They removed supporting gas strut from within the column, to get full range of motion in Z. Now you can bring the head all the way down, where fully rectracted spindle will touch the table. To move the massive head up, w/o the strut, they reduced the Z handle transfer ratio 1/2, so now the Z dial is marked in .0005

The mill has "tap" function. When used, the mill goes down to 100 RPM and direction can be instantly reversed by pressing on one of green buttons hidden in the spokes of the spindle's spider wheel. I'd only use that with taps of 3/8 and above . Not having tactile feedback makes it all too easy to break smaller ones

Controls are now on the head, in front, just where I like it, not way back on the RH side of the column. One thing I don't like is how the RPMs are controlled - via Up and Down arrow membrane switches. I like good ole POTs much more.

A huge plus for this mill is just how EZ it is to CNC it. Kits are readily available. Or, for under $4K you can get a fully CNCd , 4 axis machine from Syil.

At $1300, this one is really close to RF45 clones (

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from PennToolCo, one sold by industrialhobbies etc etc ), which is heavier and much larger machine .

We now have a complete line of rather affordable machinery X1 -> X2 ->

X3 -> RF45s ->

Bport look-alikes, fitting every space/budget/need. Hurray !!!

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rashid111
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