I am looking for a good spindle or router for my Workbee. I bought a Makita RT0701C clone which has decent shaft runout ~0.07mm, but the collet, collet nut, or combination of both are giving me significant runout ~0.22mm. I have tried several different brands of endmills from the inexpensive unbranded Chinese carbide to Amana high-quality carbide. A spindle or router with standard collet replacements would be ideal. ER11 seems to be common, but I am not sure if a spindle with an ER11 would be too heavy for the Workbee. Suggestions are welcome.
Have you tried better collets. I have a Makita router on mine and it works great. I purchased collets from Elaire Corporation. Also, have you measured the actual diameter of each endmill and entered that into your CAM software? I have yet to find a single endmill that is the size stated on the packaging. I even have some more expensive ones that run smaller than specification. For example, one of my favorites for wood is a double straight flute router bit from Freud that is about one tenth of a mm smaller in diameter than the 1/4" it is supposed to be. For most people using it for standard woodworking, they may not even notice, but when cutting parts that need to fit inside each other, it won't work without entering the actual diameter of the cutter. Also, a spindle with ER11 will work.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have measured the runout with a dial indicator. Runout is quite evident in parts that have had a contour operation or drilling. You make a good point as far as measuring the bits, so I will check the diameter on all of them. I was going of their boxed specs. By the way, milling wood is fine as I am not too concerned about millimeter precision; however, I am working on some aluminum parts, so I am trying to squeeze out every millimeter I can out of the workbee.
There are some people that have converted their Makitas to the ER system. I asked here about it last week, because I was tempted to give it a go, but I have too many other irons in the fire right now. It is a cheap conversion. Has anyone converted their router (Makita/Dewalt) to an ER collet?
