Good evening Gentlemen. I'm only just getting into this milling business properly since my WM18B arrived a few months ago, although all I've produced so far are vise clamps and currently some X and Z axis motor mounts. Now try not to laugh while I continue.

The very first time I switched the thing on there was a delay of milliseconds but it felt w-a-y longer than that before the spindle started turning. This really unsettled me as for that initial period I thought "oh,oh, it's not going to start". I switched off and tried again – same deathly hush before it began to rotate very sluggishly from rest.

So Question One is, is this normal?

Question Two should generate a bigger laugh, I feel. Because of the aforementioned breath-holding I decided that startup time was crucial to the machine, it was having a wee think and checking itself over before getting ready for swarfing. So I decided that henceforth I would let it start up on zero revs or whatever (it reaches 106 eventually) then slowly increase them to working speed. Wait, there's more… As part of this "safety first" train of thought (mechanical sympathy, if you like) I also decided that once the hole/cut/whatever had finished I would then wind the rpm right down before finally switching off. I've been doing this ever since.

So Question Two is, does it matter?