I found a few weeks ago that my spindle started making a sandpapery rubbing sound when turning it by hand and was a little louder than usual when powered. I didn’t think too much of it but contacted support to be sure (they said it was fine), but I saw a post where the spindle caught fire from a bad bearing so I’m mildly worried It seems to have started happening after I did some steel cutting but I’m not sure if that’s related.
The mic doesn’t pic up the noise as well, is this a sign that the bearings are bad? Video
Bearings wearing out is a good reason to replace that part. Good bearings feel smoooooothh. Your bit will actually wobble as it moves through different areas of the cut.
Yeah I think the bearing might be worn. I only have around at most 50 hours on the machine though. I’ve pushed it beyond the torque output of the 1.5kw spindle two or three times but nothing too bad has happened to it so I’m not sure what caused it.
I measured 0.0005 in of runout the other day through a tool and collet. I’ll try to get a measurement from the taper later today.
Do you think it’s worth trying to get the bearings replaced? It looks like I would need a press
If that’s the right number of zeroes in the runout then about 0.013mm of runout is well within spec for a lot of collets and I’d not worry about it.
I agree the noise isn’t right, but if you’re worried about the bearings wearing, I’d be testing for slack movement in the stationary spindle rather than runout. I had some noises like that from my cheapo Chinese spindle and it turned out the grease had all dried out in the bearings.
As for replacing the bearings, that’s not a task I’d undertake, it’s quite complex and the decent bearings are not that cheap either.
Would you recommend taking it apart to regrease the bearings? Low grease seems to be a more likely culprit than worn bearings considering the age of the spindle.
If you are up to it. Never taken a spindle as small as these apart. The big ones were simple to replace the bearings in. Hammer, punch, and a hand made bearing setter.
If you want to tackle it, it will give you an idea if you should continue as you get into it. Problem with adding lube it the damage is already done by your description of noise. All it will do is prolong it for a short time.
Hmm ok, I think I’ll look into the disassembly process some more.
For now it just seems like it’s making a scratchy rubbing sound without any noticeable mechanical problems like backlash (is that the right term for spindle movement?) yet. It’s weird considering the relatively small amount of hours I have on the machine. I can’t do anything with the warranty either because I had this machine for a while before I really started using it.
A bit frustrating but I guess I’ll see what I can do.
My understanding is that replacing the bearings requires an arbor press of a suitable size for the Nomad spindle — I suspect it will be the same for the VFD and HDM (and probably the 80mm spindle for the SO5 Pro if it isn’t the same as the one on the HDM), but that’s not much better than an educated guess, and if this was the support queue, I’d be transferring the ticket to someone who knew and had authority to speak, so take that as it may (and if I’m suddenly gone from the site, you’ll know why).
Please contact us at support@carbide3d.com if you haven’t already and we’ll work out how to handle this.
It seems to be a common issue through different vendors. My 800 watt water-cooled makes the same sound and worse. The noises started when it was nearly new (just a couple of hours use).
I did consider dismantle and add lube, but as mentioned above, once you start hearing the sounds, damage is already being done…
anyhow, it looks like you would need a heat gun for dismantle, a press, new seals, and a freezer and heat-gun for reassembly. When mine gets bad enough to cause issues, I will just order another. After I get a new one, I will dismantle and rebuild this one as needed.
I haven’t ran the machine since I last posted, but I turned on my machine today for a small project in plastic today and I think the spindle bearing has had it. It’s making Geiger counter sounds now
Does anyone know/have experience with the spindle bearing replacement process? I looked around and only really found one video that wasn’t really clear about the process. I know it’ll likely be more of a hassle than replacing the entire spindle but I want to at least give it a try before switching.
If your machine is still in warranty demand a new spindle. You are a hobbyist not an electronics technician and should not be expected to perform as one.
If your machine is out of warranty and you have checked for trash in the motor I would get a replacement router. The carbide router is $80 and the time, parts and worry you would spend are not worth the trouble. You could also take this as an opportunity to upgrade your router. If you took this to a repair shop you would be close if not over the price of a new router.
Unfortunately I bought the machine a while ago so it’s out of warranty. I do only have about 50 hours on it with the majority of that being in wood, so I’m pretty dissapointed that it’s failed already, although I can’t really blame C3D because they don’t make the spindle and theres not really a way to practically check these things beforehand.
Thank you for the suggestion but unfortunatetly a router just isn’t powerful enough for some of the metal projects that I do with the HDM. I was thinking of mounting a router temporarily, because if this spindle can’t be fixed then I’ll probably upgrade to a 2.2kw spindle sometime later.
I have 3 Shapeokos with their VFD spindles. All of them made this whine for a little while. I was told that the grease just needed to distribute. I also run a spindle warm-up as a custom action before I run every day.
If it’s still in warranty I would let Carbide know. If you don’t notice any issues in your work pieces I would just run it. Maybe it is a grease issue, maybe not. I’ve heard similar from larger cnc spindles. Sometimes it’s something, sometimes not. I hate to see you replace it for the noise and have something similar happen to the new one. If it’s a flaw it will get worse and be apparent that there’s an issue.
I guess I’ll see how it goes. So far whatever the problem is it doesn’t seem to be affecting runout so I I’ll do some more testing. I was just about to do a full fixture plate job with a few thousand holes so I really don’t want it to fail halfway.
How do you have your warm-up sequence set up? Is it just a series of gcode commands put through the MDI? Thanks
