I have had a mini-mill for a little while and am thinking of upgrading to something with a bigger working envelope. Unfortunately I don't have room for a 40x40 of bigger machine, so I have been looking at building something like a C-beam XL of a Sphinx 55. I play predominately in wood, and would like to keep the machine footprint under 30x30 or so. Any thoughts of the relative strengths of the 2 machines?
The OpenBuilds Sphinx 55 (20" x 20") is a solid machine The C-Beam XL machine is no longer sold in kit form - and has some weakness compared to the more modern designs. You could also DIY a "LEAD55" - essentially the LEAD1010 is just a couple of C-Beam® XLarge Linear Actuator Bundle in 1000mm lengths. Ordering 500mms and the accompanying hardware to join it together - you can pretty much follow the LEAD1010 instructions to make a small, very rigid LEAD55 The LEAD platform is a little more "modular" as it uses only off-the-shelf modular parts from our standard catalog - so its just my personal favourite as this lends it to infinite modification ability
