Aluminum work - Spindle vs Router vs AMB or Mafell milling motor

That sounds brutal - Haven’t been to Houston but really enjoyed Austin whenever I visited there!

That quiet “passively cooled” ATC HF spindle looks/sounds pretty good and it’s reportedly manufactured in the USA! Here’s what it can (and could potentially) do with steel!

Yeah, I’m been watching them for a while. It’s an impressive spindle especially for the price and USA made. It’s frame size and weight (~26lbs) might be a little much for the poor little Shapeoko though :laughing:

Highly recommend the 1.5/2.2kw spindles, they can chew through aluminium fairly well

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Which spindle at what speed with what grade of aluminum? Your cutting power was probably about 50 Watts.

1.5kw air cooled, 6082 T6

An interesting development here is the Carbide Compact Router w/ ER-11 collet:

which affords one an easy transition to a spindle, and access to various collet sizes.

and note that I finally mounted my Mafell FM 1000 WS in such a way as to put the tool at the same center point as the other options (so no lever reduction advantage):

and that I’m still fiddling with dust collection options (either an adapter plate at the bottom, or a hacked up Sweepy Pro which needs further shrouding at the top to get the dust collection to work at the bottom.