For three years the small Chester Conquest mini-mill in my workshop has served me well. It enabled me to quickly make up parts for prototypes or adapt ones that were bought but needed a bit of fiddling with. It is small but most of the parts I need to make are small too. I’ve been looking at retrofitting it for CNC operation for a while now…

But now I’m  shopping for a new mill.  I feel it’s better to start with a more substantial mill - more power, more travel and more rigidity if I’m going to spend time and money to move to CNC. For now I’m keeping the mini-mill as well, as it will take some time to adapt a new mill for CNC use, and I don’t want to be without one. Having a mill available - even a small one - when converting another one to CNC use is also a major advantage.

I’ve basically looked at the following three options:

There are some very nice small CNC mills available from Syil, based on the Sieg X2 and X3 mini-mills or a slightly larger mill. But they’re quite expensive, and still a bit too small for my liking. I have discarded the “adult-size” mill as it just takes up too much space in my workshop for the relatively infrequent use I will make of it.

Then I came across the Chester Century mill, also being sold by Amadeal as the XJ20. Even more attractive is it’s slightly larger cousin, the XJ25. Travel of 550mm x 200mm, and true variable speed from 50rpm up to 3,000rpm from a 1200W motor. A lot of mill for the money, and from the looks of it very suitable for CNC conversion. I had a look at it at Amadeal, and I’ve ordered one for delivery next week…