I apparently just borked up the spindle on my Nomad 3 when the work piece came loose and rode the bit - like a pole dancer in Hell! The spindle is dead. Won’t spin, won’t respond to commands in MDI … now I am sad.
I contacted Carbide Support, but today is Sunday, so they have not had a chance to help me, yet.
The irony is that I was about to carve up wooden hold-down clamps for use on my Nomad to help keep bits from binding or breaking.
Besides the wooden clamps that I’m going to make, do you have any other suggestions for keeping this adventure from happening again?
And, as a feature request, I’d like the Nomad to shut down when it’s overworked in a nicely recoverable way. Maybe in a user-adjustable way.
The nomad table is threaded so make a small L bracket to use to position your work. Then you can use painters tape and super glue to securely hold your projects down. With the tape and glue method you dont need any clamps. Some projects may still need clamps due to their shape but with the super glue and tape there is nothing to get in the way. Some people like double sided tape but that is not a good option for me. It might work for you. The problem with clamps is they are always in the way. The only way to avoid them is to make them low profile and make your retract height high enough to always make fast moves over the top of your clamps. However the higher the retract the better chance on taller projects you can lose steps if the Z goes to the mechanical limit.
For the painters tape I just use the 1.88" Blue 3M painters tape available everywhere. I use the TiteBond Medium viscosity super glue and it has never failed me.
I have an SO3 XXL so my machine is bigger but here is the L bracket with painters tape and super glue. You apply the painters tape to the back of the material and press it together. Wait a few minutes and start cutting. The advantage of the L bracket is you can just keep the X and Y home position and only have to set the Z height of the material. With the threaded inserts you can always remove the fence if required for a bigger project. The fence keeps your material square to the bed of the Nomad.
Instead of an “L” bracket, I have a set of M6 threaded fasteners, along with the black threaded table. I place four screws (two each axis, hex socket cap screws), pretty much the same as you have here, but with no wood - the screw heads are excellent dogs all by themselves.
There are a couple reasons that I am fixated on clamps. I was using double-sided tape and edge clamps on the sides, but the tape wasn’t enough to keep the piece in place vertically! The surface finish on my work piece was terrible, so the tape (or glue) did not hold reliably. In the past, I have used a hot glue gun. Hot glue is relatively easy to apply, and the glue peels off readily. I feel that clamps will be faster than any glues.
Thank you for the tips - I hope that I can get up and running this next weekend with help from the support team. And, I’m wondering about the controller board, but I do not plan on borking up the machine again. Maybe it needs a fuse?
