Axminster Model Engineer SeriesSX2 Mini Mill

My expectations were of a pretty basic piece of equipment. Of course it isn't a high end product, those machines cost a great deal more.Colour is blue, nice.Build quality seems quite substantial with heavy cast iron, be aware this machine is heavy, not one to place on your pasting table. 50 kg approximately. I did manage to lift it onto my workbench alone...just. I then took a tea break to recover.I've milled a bit of aluminium and the cuts look good, no noticeable sign of slop in any axis which can cause chatter marks. The motor is fantastic it has great torque and unlike some machines where low revs gives little power, the motor increases it's output to keep the cutter at the constant revs. On my lathe low revs can be stalled by holding the chuck. No such issue with this motor as your attempt to stall it, the chuck will get an increase in torque. These are Seig based machines and Axminster have the best overall design. In my opinion you will not get better value for money, many similar machines appear less capable while attracting higher prices.Delivery and customer care seems flawless too. I am going to convert to cnc as this is something I planned to do before buying. I'll machine all the parts manually on the mIll, then I can produce output using my computer based designs and control.Overall I'm very impressed, for me the backlash in table is of no concern, it is something us engineers have had to deal with on machines in our former years in engineering, it is a common failing of these cheaper costing machines and should be expected, I'll have zero backlash when I fit the ballscrews in place of the acme thread, and dual thust bearings in each axis.As a former engineer working on cnc controlled, half million pound, dual spindle milling machines back in the late 60's making parts for Concorde, I'm very comfortable with this machine both manually and when converted. All the designs and tooling are ready just eagerly waiting the delivery of stock to make the upgraded parts.Times are exciting. Back to swarf and high precision engineering once again.Thanks Axminster!Update:I found the 75 marks at 0.02mm a bit confusing, that's 1.5mm per turn of the handwheel. So moving 25.4 mm (1 inch) requires a bit of maths. Quite simple with my newly created Android based calculator. So that's 26 full turns plus 70 marks. I'm planning to put this upon Google's app store very soon.