A little irony in my upgrade path this past weekend. As I had to replace my control board so that I had the required connection for the spindle, I purchased just the new board. Rather than purchase the board and case, I figured I’d just get the board and mount it in my base.
In hindsight I realized my cover didn’t have the slotted cover for the new plug. (facepalm)
Off to the Man Cave to fire up the 3D printer and design a new cover. A few measurements and a few minutes in Fusion and problem solved.
Got a fresh batch of stickers with my 65mm mount for the spindle and found the perfect one for use.
Our C3D VFD Spindle Kit for the SOPro at work arrived today. I agree with the above that the drastically reduced noise, and the pitch of that noise is sooooooo nice. Install took 45 minutes with an enclosure that isn’t friendly for service and running air line thru the drag chain for air blast while I was there. I can’t wait for the next project to run across it. The ability to control RPM via programming, more powah, and even nicer cuts will also be bonuses.
After tramming the spindle makes some nice rainbows! I can really tell it’s built more precisely and concentric. I took off 3 of the 4 shims I had on the machine with the router, to tram the Y.
I just put together a new Pro XXL with a VFD Spindle. Since I do not have a trim router to base the distance off of, how should I set the height of the spindle in the mount?
Practically speaking, you will want the shortest tool in your arsenal to be able to reach the table when your Z-axis is at it’s lowest. Start with the bottom of the collet about 100mm below the mount, then adjust as needed.
I didn’t reference mine off of the router. I put a 0.75" block on the bed, lowered the Z axis to the bottom of travel, and set the spindle collet nut on the block. As @wmoy stated, that is the shortest tool I really use.
Do you have one of these on a spindle now? I’m intrigued since getting rid of the bit runner. My shop vac is in a not so convenient place. Did you just hook it up to the main power plug or the cord running from the VFD to the spindle?
My spindle kit arrived just after I left for vaction so I am only now getting around to installing it, and I noticed on the inside circuit board, what I assume is the code name, Spindlerella.
Anyways, initial impressions are that it seems like a great piece of kit, I only wish the cord that goes to the spindle had an easily detachable connector on both ends, at the spindle and at the VFD. But that is probably nit picking.
I’m curious why the spindle RPM is 8K - 24K? What is stopping it from going slower? It would be awesome if you could use a mechanical edge finder with it but that requires <1K RPMs.
I run my huanyang VFD at 200-300 rpm to use an edge finder all the time. It will only run for a few minutes and then shut down, just enough time to locate a corner. I don’t know if its bad for it but it works.
Can’t speak to the specifics of the Carbide spindle selection but…
My spindle is happy down at 800 RPM for the edge finder and will run that way for longer than I’ve ever tried (2.2kW Huanyang spindle and VFD). On a water cooled spindle the min RPM tends to be pretty low as you’re not driving a cooling fan and don’t need a min speed for cooling airflow. I run it at < 4,000RPM for a few minutes to warm it up slowly each time I use it.
If the C3D spindle is air cooled then that would be a very good reason to set the minimum speed high enough for cooling airflow to avoid users cooking it.
If you don’t turn on any of the low speed torque boosting modes or any servo feedback, voltage boost etc. then you’re unlikely to overload the windings at low speed, but you may run out of torque and stall it.
I also drill as low as 2,500 RPM and, although somewhat limited in torque (VFD spindles are almost constant torque), it’s quite happy at those speeds.
Wow, what size tooling are you using at such low rpm (for a high speed spindle) ? The best I can do is 8k rpm for 4mm drill bit. Tools bigger than that and the drills are breaking, or at the lower rpm the spindle tends to stall.
