I’m not intending to put a lot of axial load on it so I think it’d be fine, it’s just be some light load as I helix in.
Damen CNC isn’t even close to competitive with Sorotec. The base prices are the same but the shipping for a spindle costs double (40€) and they charge 15-19.5€ in payment fees.
Even if you’re in the US, I’m sure there are better options.
Ah, sorry, I misread. He said 500W is the minimum he recommends. The RT0701 is 700W, I don’t know how much power the XTR01Z has and he said he’s used a 1500W spindle.
Still, going by that, 800W seems on the low end of what the Nomad can handle.
0.8kw seem to be the smallest inexpensive watercooled spindle, the next step is a 0.3kw 60,000 which can’t have much tq.
With load spikes as the cutter enters the workpiece Ide much rather have an excess of spindle power. But as your numbers show, 1.5kw is a little excessive
Looks about perfect to me - based on your 3lb cutting force for (modified?) Nomads! Does it have an ER11 collet? Which one is it? Have you used one at 60,000 RPM?
Awesome - they even provide meaningful and reasonable performance data (unlike the Chinese). IMO they’d be perfect for both Nomads and Shapeokos, but you’d need to get endmills rated for those speeds, and they’re probably really expensive. Do they sell the VFDs too?
You could build a water cooling jacket to get the heat out of your quieted enclosure.
Vince’s mod was for a shapeoko, not a nomad. There would be some pretty significant changes required to get a router to fit and be usable. Likely you’re building a whole new machine at that point.
An AC spindle like the ones you show it simply not going to fit without even larger changes, and frankly at that point you are basically building a whole new machine. I’ve found that since I’ve gotten my SO3 and gotten it tuned and squared well, I rarely use my nomad. My nomad is a little accurate (screws vs belts), but not enough to be impactful for most of my projects.
Unfortunately though, I measured the Nomad spindle to be 31.75mm, so it looks like Carbide3D decided to use Imperial units for this part for some reason and it’s not going to be possible to find a drop-in replacement.
Since it’s going to be a requirement to replace the Z-axis anyway, I think it’s fine to look at the larger spindles.
But @Vince.Fab on the topic of larger spindles, does my theory about light cuts with large spindles hold? If you take a light cut with say the Makita spindle or whatever your 1.5kW spindle is, is it quieter than taking a similar cut with the stock Nomad spindle?
Alternatively, can you take heavier cuts at the same volume?