Originally Posted by
TroyO
I've been looking at the epoxy fill... I'm going with the KISS principle and I'm just going to get a pint of 2 hour epoxy and mix it with concrete mix as a filler. Just the regular Home Depot 8 oz bottles of the epoxy... and 2 hour cure or longer if they have it. I think, with the filler it will be enough?
I figure it can't hurt... it either sticks and bonds up solid in which case I'm good... or it's gonna NOT stick and work right, in which case I can probably get it out and try again.
Think of the epoxy granite mixture as being all about damping, rather than rigidity. By all means do the rigidity mods to the column that a lot of X2 owners do. I like the idea of bolting a full length piece of channel, for example.
How much difference will the damping make? I did a fill on my Industrial Hobbies mill, and I would estimate it as a 15-20% effect. 15-20% smoother, able to take more aggressive cuts, etc. The mill "feels" more solid and doesn't "ring" when you tap the column or base.
You can see more about my fill here:
http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCMillEpo...lEpoxyFill.htm
It actually is very easy. I would definitely recommend a mixture of "fill" and not just the concrete mix. The damping effects comes from the epoxy trying to "wiggle" around all the different aggregate sizes. There is a lot of value in different sizes. As you can see from my article, it's easy to figure out the proportions by simply experimenting with water until you get down to the percentage of epoxy you want to use in your mix. Very high quality commercial epoxy ganite gets below 10%. I got down to maybe 14% and it was very easy to work with.
Be careful of the resins--they can cause a nasty allergic reaction. DAMHIK.
Cheers,
BW
Try G-Wizard Machinist's Calculator for free:
http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCGWizard.html