# Fitting an Air Spring from Little Machine Shop to X2 Mill



## tmuir (Dec 30, 2009)

I'll start with first an apology as I forgot to take my camera into the workshop.
I promise to take photos tomorrow and post them up.

I've had this kit sitting on my bench for about 6 months now.
http://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=2258&category=879658189

I've been trying to clear a few projects before the end of the year and had tonight spare so decided to fit this.

First I will say I was holding off doing this as I was scared of damaging my mill as you need to drill 2 holes into the cast iron upright and 2 into the mill head.
I've never worked with cast iron before and was worried if I messed this up I would ruin my mill.

I should of never been worried, this was so simple I should of done it ages ago.
I marked out where to drill the holes and used an automatic centre punch first followed be my smallest centre drill.
All drilling was done by a hand held cordless Ryobi drill.
The cast iron was easy to drill and gave me no problems.
I have a new good quality HSS 6mm tap and this tapped into the cast iron like butter, by hand without using any supporting aids.

The only place I had to deviate from the instructions was I had to remove the original spring before I could bolt the air spring in place as the rod that past through the column was in my way.

All up it took me just over an hour to fit everything and was well worth doing.

For anyone worried about damaging your machine doing this, don't be, it was dead easy.

Will post photos tomorrow.

Now this is done I can get on with making the clamps to mount my Vertex rotary head on my mill that I got for Christmas. ;D


----------



## rake60 (Dec 30, 2009)

You will like that mod tmuir.
Happy to hear it went well for you.

Rick


----------



## tmuir (Dec 31, 2009)

Got some photos now.

First of all here is the air spring kit.






The tools needed to fit it is pretty basic.





Showing the hole drilled into the back of the column for the bottom bolt on the air spring.





A couple of photos of it fitted.










Well worth the $40 US and 1 hours time to fit.


----------

