# X2 mill air spring installed



## dgjessing (May 22, 2012)

A few weeks ago LMI's special of the week was their #2258 "Economy Air Spring Kit" - I went for it. I didn't really have any problem with the operation of the stock torsion spring gizmo, but the longer rack sounded good. So this afternoon I got around to installing it. I followed their instructions (almost) to the letter, and things went mostly according to plan. Ran into a problem upon installing the strut in the column - with the supplied hardware my strut rubbed against the back of the column casting. I fixed this by using a somewhat longer bolt at the bottom of the strut, and placing a spacer (about 1/4") on it to hold it out (more towards the center of the column) a bit. Happily, adding the spacer did not screw anything else up and the strut moves up and down just fine. The rack is a little tight - I don't know if the new one is a little thicker or what, but I'm hoping it will work itself in soon. I left out the new mounting hole for the upper limit bumper - I will make a new thingie to stop it right at the top of the column. That's another 1" + of travel (up) right there, and there is probably an additional 2 or 3 inches of downward travel. In all, I've now got about 10 3/8" of Z axis travel. The quill comes to within 1 1/4" of the table. I'm pretty happy over-all ;D


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## Troutsqueezer (May 23, 2012)

For most x2 owners the head drops a few millimeters or more every time it is loosened using the captive lever. The air lift fixes this. Guess you were lucky if that was not a problem for you.


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## rleete (May 23, 2012)

You can drill the hole for the spring about 2.5" lower than the plans, and that gives you that much more travel. Nice for using collets, where you don't have a lot sticking out of the spindle.


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