Hi Dan,
This is it. It was sold by a Chinese outfit with a warehouse on West Coast. I don't think they had any idea what it was, but the price was right. And most amazingly, they emailed me about 6 months after it had arrived to ask how it was going, had i had any trouble, and was there anything I'd learned that might be helpful to them*.
There had been a problem with the controller. The holes to mount the muffin fan had been drilled a little too close together and whoever installed the fan really leaned on it when he/she was tightening the screws such that the fan housing (frame?) was distorted and the blades wouldn't turn. It was easy to fix. I told them about it and sent a picture, but from the questions they asked, I don't think they understood.
It was well assembled, but I did have to ease a lot of sharp edges on the extrusions.
I think I paid $1399 including shipping.
It came with a 4th axis chuck and stepper - rotary table, but no index marks - which really is too big to be very useful given the gantry height. The controller has an A jack, so I suppose it would work. It also came with a Z axis sensor which plugs into the controller. It has a CD with the manual and a CAM program which I wasn't interested in because I'm up to speed on LinuxCNC which I use with my Sherline. I don't know if there is a way to use the sensor with LinuxCNC, but if there is, I haven't set it up. It's so easy to use home as X0,Y0,Z1.000, set a 1,2,3 block on top of the workpiece and set the tool height to it.
It included the pump - which like apparently all of them emits noise which can affect USB signals - keyboard and mouse in my case. solution was to put longer tubes on the pump and move it farther way from the computer. I mounted the pump on a round plywood disk which I screwd to the top of another home-depot bucket, added a bit of antifreeze to some water and have been using it ever since. It does get warm on a really long run, but just warm - not hot.
they included two collets, 1/8 and 1/4. I bought some more so I could use drills. Jobber size drills are too long - need stub drills.
There were a number of cutters, one each 1/8 and 1/4 wood router bits, apparently carbide - they sure are hard. Also a number of etching bits with 15 degree points. I cut some pcb boards with them and after a lot of fussing to get the depth right - trick is to lay a 1/4 inch (dimension verified) drill on its side and then roll it back and forth as you lower the spindle until it won't clear, then raise the spindle until it just clears and make that Z-home. This is a great way to set height on a really fine point. I did 10 different pcbs with the boards secured to a little hdpe fixture I made and the devices they became part of all work. The quality of the cut traces is quite good. Only problem is that I don't seem to be able to find 15 degree points which work as well as the ones they provided. Maybe I'm not spending enough money.
Another problem was that it has metric ball-screws, although the spec sheet said they were Imperial. It wasn't obvious at first because I was making small parts for r.c airplanes. When I cut my first vacuum table, it was off quite a bit, and then I realized that my LinuxCNC was dialed in for Imperial but I was running metric screws - again, easy to fix.
I shopped the purchase by looking at the various YouTubes where 6040 routers were demonstrated, and then Ebay. There might be four or five variations. I decided I wanted the controller this one came with, and the 2.2kW (??) water cooled spindle, and the bare aluminum extrusions. I couldn't understand why some of the machines had paint on the extrusions, but took it to be a bad sign.
I've mostly been cutting 1/16 and 1/32 plywood for r/c airplane parts. I made a vacuum table of hdpe whose suction comes from a home-depot bucket-head vac. It's loud but works fine on pieces up to about 8x12. The dust shoe in the picture works with another HD Bucket head vac. more noise. I have to wear ear plugs while this is running.
The other controller next to the monitor in the picture is the one i built for the sherline.
* I was floored by this email. I'm 75 and I've bought a lot of stuff over the years. This is the first time I got an enquiry from vendor a while after the purchase to see how it was going.
Ask if you'd like more info on this.
