Is brushless Makita as loud as the “regular” one? Assume it is, right? As much as I love this mod, wine at 30k rpm was too much for me 
It’s a little quieter as it doesn’t have the same power and uses a smaller internal fan.
Sucks there isn’t a middle ground in spindles, not that I’ve found. Like a 500watt watercooler sub 60mm would be awesome.
Been checking out 600hz spindles as well. Still much heavier than the Makita
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It isn’t quite what you asked for but you can get an 800W, water-cooled, 65mm spindle: the Mechatron HFS-6508-24-ER11.
If you go on AliExpress, you can find 500W, water cooled, 62mm diameter spindles.
It seems the 60mm part is the hardest. Is there a particular reason why you want that number? Just an arbitrarily comfortable number or is there some physical constant you’re trying to work with?
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Well, weight is a big part and currently my leadnuts are delrin so not putting additional weight loads on it would be nice.
With this Z bearing/Spindle mod the balance is kept quite nice because the brushless Makita is the same weight as the stock Nomad setup. With Nema17s I’m not exactly confortable with loading it more than designed for and still expecting it to perform better.
I have a decent amount of spindles that get swapped around, 0.8kw 65mm atc, 1.2kw 62mm 60,000rpm, and 1.5kw aircooled. All of them are pretty heavy and I suspect high speed 3d finishing quality might degrade.
The spindles sub 62mm seem to be in a different casing size class. Height is also an issue with fitting in the oem enclosure.
The mad scientist way would be to redesign a watercooled casing for the brushless Makita. It’s hard to give up 0.375/8mm capacities.
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Fusion360 Magic
If you haven’t tried Steep and Shallow you are missing out. First time using it so I probably could have set it up better. Still bananas the finish you can get!
Straight off the machine
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Damn, that’s nice! How did you get that mirror-like finish? Anything in particular?
Maybe a small plus but if you watercooled the spindle, you could go a step further and add refrigeration, bringing it even below ambient. Could be handy on hot days.
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It came out surprisingly good even though it plowed a couple spots during finishing. That steep and shallow is the business, just awesome. Without it, there would have been 2-3 separate finishing toolpaths and have taken much more time.
Nothing special. 0.010/0.010 left and ran a 0.125 ball at 2k with 0.0015 chipload. Wd40
1018 mild steel 2.25x2.25x2"
Fusion 360 3d adaptive
0.250 4 flute 20rad
CD3 compact router at minimum speed
0.100 doc, 0.010 opt, 60ipm
Lead screw nuts are preventing a deeper depth of cut but it should work. Big chunk of steel CNC’d into a intake manifold runner taper press die.
Pretty excited for the steep and shallow with 0.250 4 flute ball
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That’s awesome bud, I would have thought a 4 flute endmill at 60ipm /10krpm would be moving too slow for mild steel, chips look great though. (assuming that’s what the router runs at on speed 1)
You’ve turned the nomad into a mini vmc!
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Its definitely got the power to do some real work now. I’ve heard the C3D compact run at 12k min so I shot for a 0.0005 chipload including thinning. I did add 10-20% feedrate but felt like my leadscrew nuts just got angry.
Soooooo, looks like nuts are the next upgrade… then a nema23 Z Axis.
Crazy how much you can do with nema17s right. 85 ounces I think lol
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Lead screw nuts
Anti-backlash until you overcome the spring force.
Down into the rabbit hole.
When I first received my Nomad it suffered a broken lead nut during shipping and Carbide3d quickly rushed out a replacement. Well they sent me a whole new stepper and that’s what kicked off this little journey.
Yes there are some high tech Anti-backlash nuts available on the market and I’m currently waiting on a few email replies on price. The stock ones are radial but axial and torsional nuts can handle higher loads while minimizing drive tq. This is important when you only have Nema17s.
That’s where the extra stepper comes into play. I was able to fully dissemble it and remove the shaft without damage. Why do that you ask? Well if the inquires into heavier duty leadnuts fizzles out, then I’ll just replace the entire lead screw with a ballscrew. Definitely a “hold my beer” modification for the master Tinkerer in an effort to minimize machine modifications while maximizing performance. Anyway, ballscrews were already ordered because of a potential shipping delay. They will need some custom lathe work but I’m confident that this modification would be 100% worth it.
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You mad, Nomadman 
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I just wanna take a 0.500" doc Adaptive cut in steel, is that too much to ask? 
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@fenrus actually the shapeoko is the speed demon in the family. The belt drive and higher tq nema23s lead to awesome top speeds and some pretty insane acceleration speeds. My current record is around 400ipm running a 3 flute 0.125 adaptive full depth at 60,000rpm in aluminum. Spindle power limited.
Now the Nomad has all the spindle power so the balance of the machine has totally been rearranged. It’s still going to be a highly precise machine but only topping out a little over 200ipm in real life.
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@Vince.Fab since you’re one of the few who’ve disassembled the Z-axis carriage, could you tell me how the plate on the bottom connects to the Z-axis rails and the rest of the carriage?
I think I see some bolt heads or something down there, is disassembly and reassembly as simple as unscrewing and rescrewing some bolts?
I ended up buying a Z-axis probe and there’s about 1.5mm too little distance between the spindle and the carriage, I’m thinking of milling a new bottom plate with a small arc cut out of it to make room. It’s in a place that appears structurally unimportant.
@Moded1952 mod
Three bolts, same as top plate
Gotta love not cannibalizing any of the stock parts as well.
The bottom plate is integrated with the bearing shafts. It can be cut without issues to a certain extent.
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Perfect, thanks!
I’ll have to cut a new one with my missing arc, rather than modify this one. I don’t have another machine and I can’t make this one cut its own pieces.
Though now that I know how easy it is to disassemble the Z-axis, I can’t help but wonder about an extended Z axis with linear rails or something, like you did.
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