What spindle do you recommend for LEAD1010? I'm curently using DEWALT 26200 but they last only for about 6 months- my second spindle juts broke down.
Agreed, nothing beats the Dewalt for simplicity and reliability, but you have to do the maintenance (regularly check and replace brushes, oil the collet tapers, clean out dust etc) - which is true for everything (cars, houses, tools, the rest of your cnc, it all needs a little preventative maintenence every now and then) Brushes are a cheap maintenance item, you have a good idea how long they last you. And if you still have the first broken down around you can get it back up too by replacing the brushes. I think dewalt used to have a maintenance kit for it that included some other little wear-and-tear parts too Alternatives: VFD spindle (complicated setup/wiring, causes more EMI problems, heavier so may need to beef upframe, depending on spindle the schlep of a water cooling system's maintenance, and yet still doesnt take the need for regular maintenance away) also, expensive. Different brand of router: same same too. You are already invested, maintenance is cheap insurance
Sincerely... Makita rt0700 is not enough if you want just even to plane the 1015 spoilboard... although you want to spend hours waiting for it to cool between passes. Guess it's the same with Dewalt. I ended up burning down two makitas... still do not understand how can they sell it as a motor for a CNC... This bundles you see (and I bought) even in the top rated online shops (not China) seems to me the nearest thing to a scam I've seen. Just my opinion.
Shhhhhh! Don't tell my Makita. I do not want it to get any ideas. It will plane the surface of my spoilboard (1500mmx850mm) with a 1 inch surfacing endmill at 2500mm/min at 0.5mm doc. It also cuts aluminum like a champ at 0.8 mm doc, 900mm/min, and dial setting of about 4 with a 1/4" 4 flute endmill (also works with a 2 flute).
Yes. Then after that I cut several parts. Did you happen to have a dust shoe on that may blocked the cooling fan?
I too thought that the Fake-ita (quoting you ) may work and had bought one a few years ago in order to use it as a spindle. I bought the Grizzly flavored one. I finally build a CNC (50"x52") and installed the spindle. I proceeded to the tramming part and just couldn't get it trammed. After many tires I finally realized that the shaft was drilled crooked. The shaft itself runs true but when I put a 3/8" rod into the shaft (it fits perfectly and snag) it wobbles. If it's a true fake, and parts are interchangeable, I may try getting a new shaft and maybe than the wobble would be gone. In the meantime I got me a Chinese 1.5kw air cooled spindle. If the repair will work I can alway use the Fake-ita spindle as what it is supposed to be, a trim router!
My plan was to give it a shot and if it doesn't work, get a spindle. It is for the lathe for carving so the jobs will be long so a spindle may be a better bet.
@Giarc @Gary Caruso how long does it take for you to plane your spoilboard with the Makita? Which surface? What mm/min, rpm and doc you used? Thanks
Last time I did it was with a 1" bottom clearing router bit, at 1500mm/min 0.5mm doc and I probably had the makita at 3 speed setting, I mostly run 3-4 range. my spoil board is 32 x 49" MDF took about 40min. I just start and walk away, when my dust collection turns off I know its done. 0.5mm has been plenty. I even set the z a bit high so i'm really only probably doing half that mostly. And the makita has never gotten more than warm, never has shut down on me, running it about 2 years now, just for hobby use, If I was doing more production a brushless spindle is a must IMO. I do have backup brushes on hand and check them every so often, also blow the dust out with compressed air often. Cheers Gary
I also have a Dewalt being run all day for about 2 years still on factory brushes. They, nor the makita, gets hot enough unless you are doing something wrong with them (obstructing cooling ducts, overloading, bogging down) To anyone else reading this, consider the stats. One person, many failures. Many others, long service life. There is a common denominator somewhere in there
@Peter Van Der Walt @Giarc @Gary Caruso @Alex Chambers In your opinion which is the reason why people would spend 10x more on a spindle? I'm curious and would love to see the latest project you have been working on. Feel free to share any link please! On the other hand, would it be possible for you to share the excel or whichever table you use to get your cnc carvings? I'm looking for some reliable and experimented source because as you know I'm pretty newbie. Somewhere to see the different mm/min speed, rpm, depth of cuts, materials... anyway I feel I'm starting a new thread so other people could help.
My own? : people blowing up fake reasons why spindles are better - apparently quieter (but most noise come from cutter edge and sheet stock vibrating) - runout (ok fair enough slightly better but on an extrusion based machine deflection is a bigger issue than runout, so thats fixing the 1% while ignoring the 99% - more power (which you can't use as a hobby grade machine canbot resist it) In reality: vfd users spend weeks getting it setup because of a very confusing PD parameter setup via a UI with numbers and one encoder. Wiring is super hard. The VFDs (cheap chinese junk) spits out tonnes of EMI. Do maintenance on your router, and it will last just as long. Personal note. I have owned 3x VFD based setups over the years. First one burned motor windings for no apparent reason. Second spectacularly exploded all its output stage IGBTs. And the third just put out too much EMI, not only affecting motion control, but also affecting other industrial machines nearby (was in a proper factory, placed next to some injection molding machines about 2m away. Cured it after many weeks by throwing ferrites on the Injection molding machines internal wiring near control box)
In theory a true spindle: 1. should have significantly lower runout- on the order of microns- than a consumer-grade router due to higher-grade (P*, ABEC, etc) bearings and tighter manufacturing tolerances, leading to significantly improved surface finishes (especially on hard, chewy materials like aluminum) 2. The main difference, and the majority of what you're paying for: the bearings themselves should be both larger for higher loads and superior geometries. For example: the Makita RT0701C main bearing is a single 6003DW 35x10mm deep-groove bearing. A reasonable size, but otherwise nothing special- cheap off-the-shelf stuff that multiple tools can use to minimize BOM for manufacturing. This is balanced against again, a single 627DW 22x7mm deep-groove bearing at the top end of the shaft. A typical spindle will have at minimum a pair of 7000 series angular contact bearings (aka "spindle bearings" - angular contact can take much higher axial loads at much higher speeds) near the base, as any true spindle should. An average 1.5kW ER11 spindle that would typically replace a Makita router has a pair of 7002 32x9mm bearings at the bottom and two more(!) at the top, tightened against each other to eliminate any slop and accept high loads in any direction. The 2.2kW ER20 spindle that I currently have on the way is two 7005 P4 47x12mm bearings against another pair of 7002 bearings. 3. come with an ER collet chuck or toolchanging taper (eg. ISO20) instead of a proprietary router collet 4. Be 100% metal construction (with the exception of things like bearing seals and fan shrouds) So yeah, they're orders of magnitude better. However... All that said, Peter's correct in his assessment- if you don't have good enough workholding (ie. vacuum for large sheet materials), don't have enough rigidity (which you don't, on hobby extrusion machines, period), and have too much power again deflecting the frame, all the perfection in the world in your spindle isn't gonna fix your machine issues. And the cheap garbage VFDs people buy for less than $100 seem to be the cause of half their ongoing reliability problems. It's a machining issue, and most people coming into the hobby neither have a machining background nor have the time/willingness to put in the [thousands of] hours to learn it. So they blame the hardware, when usually they're simply trying to operate it outside of its rated envelope.
