Kevin,

I believe the controller boards on the XJ12 series mills if of the American design are about the best there is I'm afraid, there's only some much control you can have over a brushed pm dc motor….( unless you have one of the FET based controllers which are pretty crap…)

The features of the KB controllers and their Chinese derivatives are such that they use feed back from the motor to give almost constant speed and torque….can't think how that can be bettered…

Short of changing to a 3 phase setup which I doubt you'd find a motor with a similar footprint….

Have you you tried going through the setup procedure for the controller? Assuming it is a KB type….maybe you can confirm this? ( I have a copy of the manual should you need it….else look here..http://www.kbelectronics.com/manuals/kbic_manual.pdf. &nbsp

just as an aside, my lathe has a 1.5kw dc pm motor with what looks like a KB controller, and it works well…..lots of torque even at low speed….