Nomad 883 Spindle Noisy and Wobbling

Hi there,
In my second week of using the Nomad, and up until about 2 days ago I was very happy indeed with it.

So far I have cut acrylic, PTFE, aluminium sheet, and machinable boron nitride ceramics. Nothing taxing, and all with default Mechcam/Nomad settings.

Now however the spindle shaft is wobbling, maybe by about 0.5mm. And the noise coming from the machine is totally deafening… it seems as though the bottom bearing is disintegrating.

(The noise started faintly, but withing abo0ut 5 hours of cutting is now at a volume so that I can hear it outside the house from some distance… it was once silent!)

Has anybody experienced something similar, are there service parts available, I can’t see new spindles on Carbide3d’s webstore.
…I assume it’s still under warranty?

I’ll bet you just need a new bearing. Did you E-Mail support@carbide3d.com?

One thing I’d advise, though, is that if any of the material you’re cutting is making a fine dust and is abrasive, you should setup some sort of DC to make sure that it can’t get into the bearings of the machine.

I once sanded the top of an old woodworking jointer with aluminum tables, oblivious that I was making very fine aluminum oxide powder that was accumulating near the cutter-head bearings. It wasn’t long before I was replacing those bearings.

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Thank you cgalley. Yeah fine dust was my concern with the ceramic… but it’s had very little use, maybe 10 hours of cutting so far?
Do you know whether the bearings are readily removed/replaced?
Thanks again

I don’t know on the bearings, I suspect it won’t be too bad a job.

And it doesn’t take long for an abrasive dust to start causing damage. If you’re going to cut more ceramic stuff, I’d start looking at some of the DC threads for the Nomad.