Support has been really excellent so far.

There are a few vendors of the machine (It's even on Amazon, but also RobotDigg and a few other sites), but it's cheaper to get directly from Xinshan.I'm thinking about making a bunch of shrink-fit holders that all have the same shank diameter and bottom out in the spindle, so the collet and collet nut never have to come all the way off. The machine has a built-in tool probe, but swapping collets and probing takes a while. I wish I had a way to pre-set tool lengths with the ER-11 spindle.I haven't done a ton of experimenting yet, but 'conventional' style toolpaths with large stepover and small stepdown seem to perform better than 'adaptive' or 'trochoidal' style toolpaths with a large stepdown and small stepover.It could definitely be pushed harder but it gets loud. 5mm stepdown, and 2000mm/min feed with no problem. I've been roughing with a 3mm endmill at 20k RPM, 2.5mm stepover. With good tools (I've been having great luck with Datron single flute cutters for roughing), it performs pretty well cutting aluminum.But those are all relatively straightforward to re-do or repair if needed. The less-critical hardware is a little janky - the bellows way covers, the sheet metal spindle cover, the electronics box, the water cooling loop.Brushless servos, linear guides, ballscrews, and harmonic drives, on a steel structure is impressive at this price point. The core mechanical pieces of the machine seem pretty good.I've gotten along just fine with 3-axis machines up until now, but I couldn't actually find any 3-axis mills that fit what I was looking for any better, and 5-axis opens up some interesting opportunities. This machine was appealing, since it's a fair bit bigger than the Pocket NC, with ~50% more travel in each axis, all steel, servo (rather than stepper) driven, and much heavier (~70 kg). I couldn't find any examples of real people outside of China owning the machine, but after some emails back and forth with the company, including a bunch of videos, I was convinced that the machine was real and not a scam. In my search for a small-enough-to-carry-upstairs-into-my-living-room-but-not-too-small CNC mill, I ran across a scaled-up Pocket NC clone made by a Chinese company, Xinshan Tech. I was tempted to get one of their machines, but I think they're just too small and underpowered (and pretty expensive) for the sort of parts I make. It has basically the same layout as the big GROB machines, with a horizontal milling spindle moving in Z and X, and a cantilevered trunnion on the Y axis. I've been following Pocket NC since 2012, after seeing them at the NY Maker Faire - they make a tiny but surprisingly capable 5-axis CNC mill.

Goodway lathe clone