Anyone else have issues with the lower bearing on their router. I decided to pull one a part and see if I could see the issue.
Turns out the lower bearing is the culprit.
I am wondering if dust is getting in the bearing i wouldn’t think so since it is sealed. But I have thought about putting a filter on top of the router to see if that would help.
Any recommendations on a replacement bearing?
The Makita and C3D router have well documented issues with bearings. It is almost always the lower bearing. There are kits to rebuild the router but the price is almost as much as just buying another C3D router. The c3d router is a clone of the Makita 701# routers and use many of the same part.
Here is a kit on ebay: It is just the bearing is about $22.00
Buy the time you tear it apart, pull the bearings and rebuild the router a new one from c3d might be cheaper and less aggravating. Currently it is $80.00 or so.
I am going to try these. Metal cage, ABEC 3, 730 lbs static radial load.
Putting a filter at the top of the router would likely be a waste of time. To get enough air flow to keep the router from overheating would mean a filter without a lot of filtering capability. A better investment would be to have a good dust extraction system. You may already have that. The reality is at a price point of $80.00 you cannot expect a lot. For the manufacturer to make the router and make a profit and then for C3D to sell it and make a profit the total cost of making the router has to be pretty low. Having a low price of manufacturing means using cheap materials.
I think the reality is the C3d router and for that matter any palm router is going to wear out. Plus most palm routers are never run the number of hours or load that a CNC will run and use the router. There may be commercial shops that run their palm routers as much as a CNC does but most casual users never run a palm router for the number of hours and under the load we use it in our Shapeoko machines. I think the manufacturers make their palm routers for the casual user and not for a commercial shop or the loads we put on them in our CNC. I think you should just plan on replacing and/or rebuilding your palm routers every 2-3 years. They just dont make them like they used to.
I see the C3D ER-11 router is marked down. Is that about the same price as a set of bearings?
The lower bearing that I bought was 27.00. Mostly I wanted to see if it will improve the design.
I am tempted to buy the er-11 router to see how it performs in comparison.
Also wanted to note that customer support has been top notch.
I have cooked 3 of the c3d routers. First one lasted like a year so I bought a new one. 2nd one only lasted a month before the bearing seized up but customer service replaced it. Then the 3rd one crapped out after about 2 months in the middle of a long job. I had enough of that, so I bought a genuine makita router and that one still works today. Kinda think the recent c3d router bearings maybe were a bad batch. Hopefully the bearing replacement lasts awhile for you. I think you’ll get at least a year out of it.
Last November, I bought a water cooled 65mm spindle/vfd combo on amazon for a black friday deal and I love it. It’s whisper quiet and and cuts better overall. Something to consider if you want a better long term solution.
The ER11 Collets may be an improvement but it is still the same router with a different collet system. For the regular Makita and C3d routers here is an excellent source for collets: https://elairecorp.com/makitaroutercollets/
They make collets for a wide range of routers. I have them on my Dewalt 611 Palm Router and they are much better than the factory ones.
New bearings arrived yesterday! Quick install, just finished a job very little heat in the lower housing and collet.
Hey Nick what’s the part number for that bearing? The link you provided requires a login which I dont have. Thanks
How was the experience of programming the vfd?
There is such a big price difference between the stock vfd and one pre-programmed for a C3D machine that its hard not to consider buying a stock one and trying to diy the configuration.
On the other hand, ive never configured a vfd before and i know it woukd be easy to mess up.
I am a wood turner. I belong to an informal club and one of our members can program VFDs that are on the Powermatic and Lugana lathes. The VFDs have a lot of parameters that can be possible used but luckily for us our member knows which ones to set up for a lathe. Just as with the C3D VFD that comes pre programmed the Powermatic and Laguna VFDs are quite expensive. The actual VFD is not all that expensive it is the programming you are really paying for when you buy from the OEM. Unfortunately VFDs do fail and are expensive to buy the OEM replacements. I suggest that you unplug your VFD when not in use. Lightning strikes on your electrical systems seem to cause a lot of VFD failures. Just plain noise from other appliances and maybe even your neighbors can cause VFD failures. So dont tempt fate with your VFD and unplug when not in use. Some people never experience a failure with their plugged up and on all the time but if it does fail it is an expensive fix.
It really wasn’t bad. The hardest part was actually wiring up the additional relays needed for the start/stop signal and I used a relay to turn on the vfd when my cnc machine turns on. There’s a list of like 12 parameters you need to adjust but it’s fairly simple. I should make a how-to guide and post on youtube. It sure would have been helpful vs sifting through several forum posts. I designed a 3d printed enclosure to mount my vfd into as well.
There’s a user on this forum who (I think) documented all the parameters for his particular VFD configuration. I think it was a Huanyang model, so I don’t know how specific they are just to that model.
He posted them here:
