Shopping advice / water-cooled spindle

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Allright, it’s been months since I bought a 80mm spindle mount from @Luke, and the trick I played on myself worked: I have now had enough of having it sit there unused, so I need to buy a spindle now (and no, I have no pressing reasons to do this upgrade, I just fancy the quiet and automatic RPM control)

I have re-read many spindle-upgrade threads here, but it did not tell me what to watch out for when trying to pick a specific offer in the sea of chinesium products on ebay/amazon/aliexpress.

Does it boil down to “you cannot trust any of these specs anyway, just roll a dice, pick one and cross your fingers” ?

From your experience are there any “reputable” brands or brands that I should avoid at all cost ?

Is there any way to tell if the advertised bearings and runout value are not completely imaginary ?

I’d rather buy a higher quality 1.5kW model (which is plenty enough for me) than an average 2.2kW one, but I really cannot tell them apart right now.

Any hints and tips would be appreciated, thanks !

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Automatic speed control and on/off is awesome. Game changing.

I will say I don’t think there are any tricks or anything really to be aware of. Most seem to be the same and I have had a number of them. I’ve never had a failure. GO for water cooled - they are incredibly quiet.

I have noted that the new G-penny brand that has popped up has the ground cable connected. This is a must to ensure you don’t get mental EMI issues. You can do this yourself on other brands but it’s a minor inconvenience and easy to miss.

I will say the spindle mounts that come with most of these are total junk cast aluminium.

Run out is incredibly low on both of mine. I cant’t recall exactly what it was but nothing to worry about.

Something most overlook is the VFD. In the 2 years there have been allot of changes. From being 50% smaller and getting allot simpler to setup and control.

I’ve just completed converting my cooling system to a closed loop PC style. Just because I wanted to remove the large water container under my machine and put more junk there instead…

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Following the same logic as @Julien I’m also leaning toward a spindle. @Luke appreciate your advise on a spindle. Care to comment on an appropriate controller?

Yeah, the need for a big bucket of water and a place to put it has been a barrier for me. Will be doing some research on this. Again, any further comment from you, Luke would be appreciated.

BTW, reserve a mount for me please :wink:.

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G-penny it is, after a short final round of comparison with other options, I took the plunge and ordered this kit (well the european version of it):

I went for the ceramic bearings option. I’ll report here after I receive and install it. Obviously, I’ll dump the poor cast aluminium mount and use this anodized beauty instead:

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I like the look of these G-Penny ones. I don’t have one but the last thing I need is another spindle… The fact there is some blue on there…

I have 2 huyang vfd’s they seem pretty good for the money. I’m sure there are better ones out there but these work and are difficult to fault. The first one I bought had over 100 settings, the next one was stripped down to about 30, the second was also significantly smaller.

On a side note the 80mm blue mounts we make are coming to the Carbide 3D store soon.

As to the coolant - I should say I don’t actually have a big unsealed bucket… It was more of a big sealed container, but I wanted something smarter, that took no room under the machine.

Here is the new setup, I made a rear panel for the machine, then made all the mounting points and an offset panel for a set of 12v computer fans and a pc radiator. The coolant pipes only go through the top drag chain now. I do have a coolant thermometer on it’s way - keen to keep an eye on it early doors. This setup should be transferable to a Shapeoko easily enough.

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Thanks, now I’ve got an idea of how to construct one.

I didn’t literally mean an open bucket. Wouldn’t work at all in my flying dust workshop!

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Yeh it’s pretty easy, I don’t think you will struggle.

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Are you using water or some other liquid coolant?

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I use windscreen washer fluid. It’s blue, it won’t freeze, anti toxin and won’t corrode aluminium or plastic. It also don’t go manky like water and cost £5 for 5 litres. This setup only needs around 1l

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Yep, I saw the color and wondered if the lines were colored or the liquid was not water. I think that warm water especially in a closed circuit would get funky pretty fast.

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You have a thing for blue don’t you?

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Yeah, who would ever use just an open bucket. . .

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It’s not mine! I’m just… uhhhh… holding it for a friend… Yeah, that’s it.

Grabs keys and heads to the hardware store

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Interesting! I was just helping a friend today with mounting his new spindle. He bought it from Amazon, Chinese mfg. and ONE 5" X 8" paper with instructions, but they were in English. The big thing about these is that instructions to set up the control unit are extremely limited and on video at UTube.

The big thing I noticed between the router he had and the spindle was the noise level. He had it running at 24k and it was quieter than the fan on the control unit.

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Dang if I would have known about the G-Penny Spindles I would have gone that route so it matched the blue of all Lukes stuff.

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Unboxing the G-penny BST-2.2C-80-24K, man this thing is huge and heavy.
If the side by side comparison of the collet nut vs the Makita’s is any indication:

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First thing I checked is the runout inside the collet taper: it is below the rated precision of my dial indicator (0.01mm / 0.0004"), visually it looks like it could be ~0.005mm / 0.0002". We’ll see how much I get at the endmill level using the provided ER collets.

The packaging was quite good, lots of protection. The inverter comes with a 60 page user manual in what looks like decent English. So far so good.

There is however a MAJOR issue: the blue of the spindle does not quite match the blue of the BeaverCNC mount :slight_smile:

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How much does it weigh? Does the manual include a speed, torque and power curve? The C in the model number likely suggests that you chose the ceramic bearing version, is that correct? Here’s Kennametal’s description of the pros and cons of steel and ceramic bearings.

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It weighs 5.4Kg / close to 12lb.

The user manual does not seem to have any interesting power/torque/speed curve, but honestly I did not go through it yet. I found it online as a pdf if you want to have a look

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That’s the VFD manual so it wouldn’t have info (power/torque/speed curve, etc.) on the spindle/motor (which is required to setup the VFD properly). That relatively light weight, the fact that the case says “220V, 10A, and 2.2kW”, and 220V X 10A = 2.2 kW makes me wonder if the 2.2kW is the input rather than the output power rating - as it should! It should be plenty powerful enough anyway, but you’ll need to know how to setup the VFD for the motor.

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more than probably so. I bought it for the quiet and RPM automation, the 1000+watt output power may come in handy later.

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I checked the claim that the spindle is grounded, and indeed the 4th wire (pin 4 of the aviation connector) is connected and has continuity with the spindle body (I checked with a multimeter). Good.

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  • the input 220V power plug I will use has live, neutral, and earth.
  • I plan to use a 4core 1.5mm² cable I have on hand, to wire the spindle pins 1/2/3/4, to terminals U/V/W and Earth of the VFD.

So I would end up connecting both the earth wire from the 220V plug and the earth wire from the spindle body, to terminal 9 (Earth) of the VFD:

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Which sounds consistent with the diagram on the first page of this (very interesting) guide I stumbled upon:

but since earthing details are scarce in the posts I found here on the forum, I thought I would double check here.

Also, my 4 core wire is not shielded : from your experience, it is worth going for a shielded 4core cable instead, to prevent any possible EMI issue ?

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