@Jens Here is your update. It took me about 8 hours to assemble by myself. Even flipping the table over wasn’t too hard. The instructions call out for (2) dust shields at assembly but my kit did not have them. I need to contact Sienci about that. The online instructions are very detailed and for the most part easy to understand. Kudos to the professionals that put them together. As someone who has created engineering drawings for machine tools for 34 years I upstand how difficult it can be to make a concise set of instructions. Especially when the skill level of the assemblers can vary widely. Here are a few things I ran across during my build.
- Table assembly (2) call outs for quantities of screws that didn’t match the pictures.
- The t-nuts for the legs are captured and when you get to that point you’ll be like WTH until you realize they roll in from the front. That wasn’t clear to me from the instructions given.
- It’s possible to assemble the X rail facing the wrong way. I got this right the first time but a side diagram of end plate in relation to the Y-axis motor would help clarify this.
- Make sure you have your spindle motor wire placed in the cable carrier and it reaches the control box before you snap all the covers closed. In fact do that for all the wires. You don’t want to have to pop all those things open twice.
- Look inside the X-rail for the parts stored in side the rail at shipping.
- I couldn’t find instructions on how the dust shoe is assembled. With trial and error I did manage to assemble it.
- The notches on my SLB cover for the wire access were difficult to use. I had to widen them on my laser to get the cover to go back on without forcing it. YMMV
There you have it. This new machine is a beast. I made some really cool stuff on my first gen LM and it was a solid machine for many years that I loved to work with, but the Altmill makes it look like a toy. I can’t wait to see what I can do with it. Now it’s time to add a new line from my dust collector and get a dedicated 20amp outlet installed and then start making stuff. Hope you get your machine soon.