I'll be getting some high quality gibs made for me because I found the Z feed gib to be quite poorly made. Their poor quality is quite sub par in comparison with the rest of the machine build. I've looked at two of them now (one replacement) and found them both to be well out of plane and not very smooth. My first one even had severe ding marks on the surface presented to the vertical way so I suspect that the parts are being dumped into a common box and roughly handled so they're damaging each other.
I'm going to stick my neck out (because the current gib hurts my eyes) and get a couple accurately custom ground for me. I can put on some marking blue to see what kind of contact I get before committing to a short run.
Are other X4 users interested in upgrading to higher quality vertical feed gibs? I took my machinist out for coffee to talk the job over and it would probably cost me around $150 to do a short run of gibs (around 25 gibs) ground in O-1 steel. I plan to use unhardened stock so as to reduce wear to the ways (gibs are replaceable, ways are not).
I'm not asking for any significant commitment. Just a shout out from those interested in better quality gibs to preserve their Z ways and maybe even improve performance a bit (lower friction, less wear, maybe even less clearance).
I think I should have my own gibs made in a couple weeks so I can do the contact assessment (prussian blue etc) and see if we're able to make good parts. After that, maybe 3wks before I have deliverable gibs for other X4 users.
Any takers?