The figNoggle Designs’ Workshop is mainly a constantly-updated portion of the shop dedicated to learning, R&D and other fun stuff. The posts here will often times be short, but will give you enough information to ponder and then make. When we collect enough information for a true post of some kind, we’ll merge that into the production area of the website (the stuff outside of the “Workshop”). Stay tuned!

We design, modify, and build hobby and light industrial machinery and enjoy doing so with Asian-made mini-mills and mini-lathes.

We offer both plans and kits and continue working on various projects that make your mini machines better!

We are offering DRO and CNC conversion plans (cnc plans and kits) to for the Sieg X2 mini-mills sold by the following companies:

•Harbor Freight 44991 •Grizzly G8689 •Micro-Mark 82573 •Homier 3947 •Cummins 7877

Our CNC conversion plans allow you to maintain manual operation in all axes as well as use CNC operation without changing hardware between operations. This makes machining simple parts quick and easy by hand. For more complex parts (such as 3D or 2D contours) you can let the machine run via CNC.

This design is optimized for materials-use and uses easily purchased and inexpensive off-the-shelf parts and is also designed with the hobbyists’ limited bench top space in mind.

What is CNC? It’s an acronym for “Computer Numerically Controlled”. Basically it means that the machine (in this case, the Sieg-built X2) is controlled by your computer. You design the part in some CAD (computer-aided drafting) or 3D modeling software such as AutoCad, Rhino3D, SolidWorks, or Inventor. Then you create G-Code for that part using some CAM (computer-aided modeling) software such as MeshCam, MasterCam and then using some controller software such as Mach (artofcnc), TurboCNC (dakeng) drive the stepper/servo motors (xylotex) to control the movement of the spindle head and bed. Then your workpiece is cut to your design!

CHECK OUT THE MACHINES.. You will find lots of pictures and information about the Chinese-made light industrial line of machinery from Sieg and other manufacturers.

Keep checking back here. Plenty of info is updated on a daily basis.