I opened the Carbide ER-11 Compact Router (65mm) that is on sale from Carbide 3d, and after having gone through all the steps to seat the router in the carriage correctly and setting everything up, I encountered a peculiar issue.
After having inserted a 1/8" bit into the collet and tightened it down into the spindle, I turned the router on and visually saw loads of runout. I though to myself, that is odd. So, I investigated.
First, I broke out my dial indicator and a stand. I put the dial indicator to the bit (router off and unplugged) (the bit was still in the router on the cnc) and found that there was about 0.0250 → 0.0300 (twenty five to thirty) thousandths of an inch of runout. So, the next thing I did was take the bit out, unscrew the clamping nut and took the collet out.
I then put the dial indicator to the spindle directly, and that read about 0.001 → 0.002 thousandths of an inch of runout.
After that, I put the clamping nut back on with the 1/8" collet and touched the dial indicator to clamping nut. All of the touching points were completely round. I recorded the same 0.001 → 0.002 thousandths of an inch of runout.
I then thought, what if it is the bit itself? So, I went over to my lathe and clamped the bit into the church and put the dial indicator to it. Recorded runout was 0.001 thousandth of an inch.
Ok, so it is not the router, it is not the bit, then what could it be? I looked inside the clamping nut to where the collet makes contact with the clamping nut and found that the inner ring is not concentric. The nut wasn’t milled properly.
So my question is, is this a common issue? Of was I just unlucky to get a defective ER-11 clamping nut?
