I posted this in the OX group as well.
Originally shared by Anthony Bolgar
Just finished swapping out my 1.5kw water cooled spindle for a 600W air cooled. I found I was not using all the available power in the 1.5kw, and it was a little on the heavy side for the 60mm Z axis. I got a great deal on it from banggoood, here is the link to it:
https://www.banggood.com/ER16-Chuck-DC-110V-600W-Air-Cooled-Spindle-Motor-With-Speed-Governor-And-57mm-Clamp-p-1127094.html?rmmds=myorder
I only paid $227.00 Canadian for it, so approximately $165.00 USD. The great thing about this spindle is that it uses an ER16 collet, allowing for some larger bits to be used. And there is negligible run out on the spindle.
I had to make an adapter ring for my mounts as the 1.5kw was 65mm and this one is 57mm in diameter. So I made some 3D printed rings to adapt the spindle mount and dust shoe. I am very pleased with this spindle, but only time will tell if it will stand up to the intended usage. I can always go back to the 1.5kw if needed.
I think you won’t be able to use those larger bits… 600w it’ not much, especialy you get those watts at high speed
I will be testing it out tomorrow, so I guess I will find out if it can handle a 3/8" bit or not. I am not planning on cutting aluminum with it, basically just wood and acrylic. And as I mentioned, I can always go back to using the 1.5kw spindle I originally installed.
I have the “500 Watt” air cooled ER11 spindle. So a step down from this one. It has a lot of power, but the RPM is too low for really small diameter bits. My spindle is supposedly 12,500 RPM. A router or a Dremel is 22,000-30,000 RPM. 12.5 is almost halfway there, but not quite fast enough. I don’t know why all of these air cooled spindles spin so slow. Maybe they have fewer motor poles in them, or something? They work. Still there is just something fundamentally disappointing about them.
I tried measuring the current draw on mine to calculate its actual power use. There was something up with that too. Even loaded down pretty hard I did not see it draw more than 100 Watts. I’m not saying my testing methodology was perfect, but I still expected to get better numbers than I did. Again I was left with a bit of a meh feeling about things.
I started too with a 500w er11 and i think the real downside is the lack of rigidity. Comparing to the bearings of the aircooled 1.5kw spindle the ones of the 500w are minuscules. Of course if you don’t want to cut alu, it will work but more rigidity never hurts, even for acrylic. I intend to use the small one in a little machine only for pcb. Even if they are a little slow as @Paul said (and he is right!).
@Alex_Paverman I isolation route PCBs on my engraver and what I do is just let my machine run over the job a few times. That makes up for the slow spindle speed. Of course it makes the job take many times as long as it should too. But what really matters is how the work turns out. Taking multiple passes really cleans the board up.
I just got new bits that are a little bigger than the old ones I was using. I was having trouble soldering the gap was so thin. I was using .2mm ones I think, and I went to .3mm ones. I have not tried my new bits yet but I think they are going to help me out.
Plus when I take multiple passes I can really zero in on a good depth by making adjustments between cuts. I went over this board a few times. http://i.imgur.com/YyqiE9R.jpg
With the larger collet I can use up to a 3/8" bit, which will work better than a smaller bit at the lower RPMS. I should be able to get the proper chip loading if I buy the right bits. And this spindle will not be cutting any metal, just wood and acrylic.
@funinthefalls large diameter bits only work for large areas of material removal. I generally do not do that kind of work with my engraving machine. For fine details I have to use small diameter bits. They are the only bits that fit.
