# Busy Bee Cx600 Milling Machine And Plastic Gears



## Garyg (Sep 28, 2015)

I was looking on the internet for info on these milling machines. I couldn't find too much but lots on the Grizzly GO704 which I gather is the same thing. Page after page on the plastic drive gears stripping. Are these machines really that fragile? I wanted to go one up from a mini mill.


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## brino (Sep 28, 2015)

I use Grizzly manuals all the time for Busy Bee products. 
The Grizzly ones are readily available, the Busy Bee web site seems to be getting worse every time I see it!

I have no experience with plastic gears on a mill.

-brino


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## RJSakowski (Sep 28, 2015)

Here is the manual for the mill you are looking at. http://busybeetools.com/content/product_manuals/CX600.pdf

Bob


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## ttt (Oct 5, 2015)

Garyg said:


> I was looking on the internet for info on these milling machines. I couldn't find too much but lots on the Grizzly GO704 which I gather is the same thing. Page after page on the plastic drive gears stripping. Are these machines really that fragile? I wanted to go one up from a mini mill.



I have a G0759 (which is a G0704 with DRO). Of note is that all these mills are essentially rebrands of a Weiss WMD25LV (or WMD25) with an R8 collar (http://www.weiss.com.cn). I converted mine to a belt drive due to the noise and vibration reduction you can get with that. There are 2 Delrin gears in the machine. They are _supposed_ to break when you for instance crash the machine hard and your tool gets stuck. The idea is that the motor is more expensive to replace than the gears, or worse your bearings in the spindle get destroyed. Just have a few extra at hand and you should be fine. I've used mine without belt drive for 6 months and never had an issue, though I never crashed/stalled the machine at full motor output.


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## ttt (Oct 5, 2015)

Another option would to be to wait for a version of the new Sieg  X2.7 to become available here. It has a belt drive and similar specs to the WMD25LV. http://www.siegind.com/products_detail/&productId=166.html Nice review here:


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## natoround (Oct 6, 2015)

The confusion  to new  people to the bench top  machines around what is  really a Sieg model can be  cleared up on the  LMS store. A lot  of  good information  about which parts and  extras  fit what.


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## brav65 (Oct 6, 2015)

Or get a Precision Mathews PM-25MV  with a standard belt drive or  a PM-727 with a metal gear train...


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## wrmiller (Oct 6, 2015)

Used my PM25 (earlier model with the plastic gear) for months before I converted to a belt drive. Never had a problem, even with a 3/8" rougher in mild steel. Going slowly of course. 

I remember someone complaining about stripping the gear, but they were using something like a 5/8" or 3/4" end mill. Way too big for this size machine IMO. If you use the machine within it's design envelope it will work well. Push it and things break. If you need to use endmills that large, I would suggest looking at a larger machine that won't break/wear out from the overstressing. Just my perspective.


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## Garyg (Oct 9, 2015)

I live in Canada . The only brands I have seen are the Busy bee or King in that size of mill. I looked at the  Precision Mathews PM-25MV online and would buy that if it was available in Canada.


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## Olds Joe (Oct 15, 2015)

I have a G0704 with the plastic gear on the motor. The mesh between this gear and the intermediate shaft gear was excessive when I first started using the machine. This made it noisy and I'm sure if I had crashed it the gear would have stripped/broken. I readjusted the mesh slightly for more contact and now it runs quieter and is probably not so prone to breakage. I am ordering a spare gear though just in case.

Plans for the future include a larger motor and possibly a belt drive system.


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## charlton (Oct 28, 2015)

Gary, I believe Matt sells (frequently?) to Canada as well. I inquired about the PM25 before and he said it was no problem shipping to Canada. Of course, with our Loonie being so weak, the appeal of buying from the States is diminished.


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## Garyg (Oct 29, 2015)

I went and bought the Busy bee CX600 last week when it was on a one week only sale. I will check the gears before I start it up.


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## ccarrigan (Oct 31, 2015)

I have the CX601 and have not used it that much. I am however worried about the gears. Without dismantling the machine, I have tried to determine which gears we are talking about from the parts diagram. If some one knows the part numbers for the these and the best place to buy them I would be grateful to hear from them. As well I am wondering where the LMS website mentioned earlier is loacated. My apologies for not being able to figure this out.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## charlton (Oct 31, 2015)

Don't know the part number but LMS is www.littlemachineshop.com.

Cheers,
Charlton


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## charlton (Jan 10, 2016)

ccarrigan said:


> I have the CX601 and have not used it that much. I am however worried about the gears. Without dismantling the machine, I have tried to determine which gears we are talking about from the parts diagram. If some one knows the part numbers for the these and the best place to buy them I would be grateful to hear from them. As well I am wondering where the LMS website mentioned earlier is loacated. My apologies for not being able to figure this out.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk



Did you ever determine whether the gears are plastic or not? Our dollar continues to slide which means the other mill I wanted to get (PM-727M) is starting to become unrealistic so I'm considering the CX601 as well. I'd be interested in knowing whether it has plastic/nylon gears.

Thanks,
Charlton


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## brav65 (Jan 10, 2016)

Hi guys!

Any of these style mills can be converted to a belt drive rather simply.  You can purchase the pulleys online from a number of different sources along with the appropriate belts.  All you need to fabricate is the motor mount and th appropriate spacers.  Matt at QMT sells the PM-25 with the belt drive included so you could order pulleys from him and just fab the mounting plate for the motor.


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## charlton (Jan 10, 2016)

brav65 said:


> Hi guys!
> 
> Any of these style mills can be converted to a belt drive rather simply.  You can purchase the pulleys online from a number of different sources along with the appropriate belts.  All you need to fabricate is the motor mount and th appropriate spacers.  Matt at QMT sells the PM-25 with the belt drive included so you could order pulleys from him and just fab the mounting plate for the motor.



I think this is largely true if you're in the States but I find that things are terribly difficult to source here in Canada. With the Canadian dollar incurring an additional 42% charge, ordering from the States now just isn't really economical now. If only we had a McMaster-Carr here....


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## charlton (Jan 12, 2016)

BTW, I contacted Busy Bee and they basically confirmed that the CX601 has both plastic and steel gears. Boo.


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## great white (Jan 12, 2016)

charlton said:


> I think this is largely true if you're in the States but I find that things are terribly difficult to source here in Canada. With the Canadian dollar incurring an additional 42% charge, ordering from the States now just isn't really economical now. If only we had a McMaster-Carr here....


Oh so true. Shipping costs usually put the last nail in that coffin too.

I'm beginning to wonder when the loonie is going to bottom out....if ever.

I keep wondering how much Justin has to do with all this.......


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## charlton (Jan 12, 2016)

Well, it seems we've dipped below 70 today. I think we can expect to dip quite a bit more and probably stay there for quite a long time.

I don't know how much Justin has to do with this but it feels like we're always on the losing end of the stick. Food costs either go up because of oil costs (transportation costs) even when the dollar is high or they go up because the dollar is weak (even though transportation costs are probably low). <sigh>


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## owdlvr (Jan 12, 2016)

ccarrigan said:


> I have the CX601 and have not used it that much. I am however worried about the gears. Without dismantling the machine, I have tried to determine which gears we are talking about from the parts diagram. If some one knows the part numbers for the these and the best place to buy them I would be grateful to hear from them. As well I am wondering where the LMS website mentioned earlier is loacated. My apologies for not being able to figure this out.





charlton said:


> BTW, I contacted Busy Bee and they basically confirmed that the CX601 has both plastic and steel gears. Boo.



After reviewing all of the options that are available to me, including driving down to bellingham to pick up a Grizzly, I finally put a deposit down on a CX-601. Yes, it does have the plastic and steel gears. Currently the gears are in stock at the Toronto Warehouse, but they did admit to me that when they are out of stock it can be a while to obtain them. They emailed me the part numbers and (current) pricing of the gears, which I assume you can cross-reference to the parts diagrams at the back of the manual:

pcx601230 $19.99
pcx601209  $29.99
pcx601double shifting gear $59.99

For what it's worth, I'm simply going to buy a spare plastic gear to have "in case", while ensuring that I triple check the gear mesh on each of the gears before and after break-in. Based on what I've been able to find online, problems with the plastic gears seem to be either initial issues (probably didn't check the gear mesh before initial use) or from crashing the machine. My plan of attack is to enjoy the machine as is, and if the gears become an issue, swap over to a pulley setup. It appears as though you can buy a full kit, just the pulleys or make the whole thing yourself if so inclined.

For my order, I simply requested they include "the gear that most often strips out when you crash the machine", which Norm in BC seemed familiar enough with. Once it arrives, I'll post the correct part number and cross-reference it to the 601 part diagram.

-Dave


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## charlton (Jan 12, 2016)

Thanks for posting that information, Dave. 

I assume the double shifting gear is part 212 "shafting gear" (as it's called in the manual) 31/56T. Looks like two plastic/nylon gears on the shaft assembly and one on the motor.

Cheers,
Charlton


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## owdlvr (Jan 12, 2016)

I've only seen the mill in person to measure it for my shop, and I've been doing all the ordering over the phone / email with the intention of picking it up at the end of the week. Once I'm on-site at Busy Bee with the machine, I'll try and confirm against the manual exactly which gear is what. Should only be the end of the week before I know for sure.

The way I see it, having a spare gear is probably the same as the spare motor for my race car. I used to pop motors with relative frequency until invested the dollars to have a spare on the stand, always waiting. I've never needed it 

-Dave


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## charlton (Jan 13, 2016)

Sounds good. It'll be hard to determine anything by looking at the machine I suspect but hopefully the store salespeople will know. Unfortunately, here in Concord (Toronto), I find some of the salespeople rather clueless about what the machines they're selling which is a real pity.

Yes, it seems when you have a spare all ready, you won't ever need it. As soon as you get rid of the spare, something will happen that precipitates needing the spare.  It's the curse of Murphy.


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## Downwindtracker2 (Jan 15, 2016)

Our Canadian dollar is a petro dollar. As the price of oil drops so does our dollar. Oil $29, CDN$ 68cents this morning. We have bottomed in the low 60s, before. I'm kicking myself for not ordering tooling from Enco when our dollar was much higher. No border waits,now.

For things like bearings  and sheaves there is Wajac and Motion Canada. You get better stuff cheaper. Wajac is clueless on bearings, but great if you need a bulldozer part, they  did take over Kaman Bearing. Acklands is  Granger. For machine tooling, both Thomas Skinner and KBC are good to deal with.


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## owdlvr (Jan 15, 2016)

Picked up the CX601 yesterday, and managed to get it installed in the shop. It would appear there is no easy access to the gears, either for taking a peek and/or for checking the mesh. My spare gear is coming from Toronto, so it will be a bit before it arrives out west. Will report back when I learn more.


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## charlton (Jan 15, 2016)

Congrats. Two of the plastic gears shouldn't be too hard to access as they are just hidden under the motor mount. It's the double gear on the counter (secondary) shaft that will require work to get out.


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