I am probably late to the party but a couple of thoughts. I like to mess with and adjust the gib before installing the lead screw, you can easily slide it back and forth and see how much it shakes at different locations. It is a little slower when you have to crank the handle and you lose some feel. You may find you can put just a little pressure on the Y slide lock when near the center of travel or when milling in the X direction.
Hand scraping is an interesting skill skill to learn, start by making an angle straitedge, you will need it and some other special tools someday to scrape the dovetails. In the meantime use your mill as it is. If you do decide to get it machined, plan on spending some quality time on the phone. When I had my lathe bed planned I had quotes ranging from $250 to $5000.
I use MT2 collets (set of 1/8 to 1/2 by 1/16 ths) almost all the time for end mills, they release easily and you end up with the end mill closer to the spindle than with the ER32. The ER can use a wider range of sizes so would be useful for drill bits but I usually use a drill chuck for that.
I ended up removing the brake from mine, I just let it coast to a stop than grab ahold of both sides of the belt with one hand when changing collets.
Some of my MT2 tooling did not have the 3/8-16 threaded end for the drawbar, I made a brass sleeve that is MT2 on ID and straight on OD so I can mount a MT2 arbor in a chuck in the lathe to add threads on the end.
Hand scraping is an interesting skill skill to learn, start by making an angle straitedge, you will need it and some other special tools someday to scrape the dovetails. In the meantime use your mill as it is. If you do decide to get it machined, plan on spending some quality time on the phone. When I had my lathe bed planned I had quotes ranging from $250 to $5000.
I use MT2 collets (set of 1/8 to 1/2 by 1/16 ths) almost all the time for end mills, they release easily and you end up with the end mill closer to the spindle than with the ER32. The ER can use a wider range of sizes so would be useful for drill bits but I usually use a drill chuck for that.
I ended up removing the brake from mine, I just let it coast to a stop than grab ahold of both sides of the belt with one hand when changing collets.
Some of my MT2 tooling did not have the 3/8-16 threaded end for the drawbar, I made a brass sleeve that is MT2 on ID and straight on OD so I can mount a MT2 arbor in a chuck in the lathe to add threads on the end.
