Alternative milling spindles for the Nomad

I think you’d be better off with an Electrospindle rather a HF-Motor “Please note that HF motors are much cheaper than the electric spindles in terms of price, but there is a big difference. The HF motors have a maximum speed of 18000 rpm. Furthermore, the design is designed for predominantly radial loads. You should purchase an electrospindle for drilling.”
Unfortunately, their Electrospindles are bigger and more suited to Shapeoko use than Nomad. Unlike Sorotec, damen CNC will ship to the US and seemed to have lower prices.

Perfect for Shapeokos, overkill for Nomads. If you’re mostly cutting wood and plastics, you could save money and might be satisfied with a G-Penny spindle like this one. Shapeoko users seem happy with them.

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.

Oh and missed the last bit:

How is it overkill for Nomads? Vince seems to be working with ~500W so 800W doesn’t seem like a huge jump.

Where did you see that?

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.

He must of been referring to his 60,000 RPM spindle with a 1/4" endmill.


If I remember correctly, he said that his modified Nomad “likes” 3lb cutting force, and he seems to be setting 10lb as the maximum machine force in SFPF workbook. So here’s what powers are required at the recommended 20,000 RPM.

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 :sweat_smile:

Still fun though

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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?

There will be axial loads whenever you’re not side milling with straight endmills.

I came across these guys who have some rather interesting spindles like this one

550W, looks like it has dimensions similar to the Nomad’s spindle and 5-80k RPM. They do have plenty of others as well.

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https://m.alibaba.com/product/1722428584/mini-motor-cnc-ER11-300w-spindle.html

I thought it was a 24k but turns out the photo is wrong. 60krpm. The size puts it very close the the Makita.

Photo of Makita vs 0.8kw 110v 65mm (disregard atc)

It looks like it’s only 300W though?

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.

Apparently the GDZ-13 comes in 220v 0.8kw 24krpm, 300w 60krpm, and a 400w 24krpm.

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I emailed the Jäger guys and I’ll see if I can get an idea of the price of that spindle. IBAG also has some interesting options so I emailed them too.

I did an upgrade to a 70w BLDC motor, tutorial and results here: Nomad spindle motor....upgrade?

Honestly it wasn’t worth the trouble.

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.

I think you’re a bit out of date, look carefully at the title of the video he posted earlier :slight_smile:

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TBD - @Vince.Fab’s testing is probably currently limited by his power supply and/or machine rigidity…

Well, there you go, I stand corrected.

So I heard back from Jäger and unfortunately their spindles are on the higher end of the price range:

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?