So the slide for my router z axis showed up last night. Forgot to grab a pic, but it looks very nice even better than the sellers pic. My next question is, do you think this would be a good router to use Makita RT0701C. And can I just plop a 1/4 inch carbide from my cnc mill stash into the collet, tighten it and go or is there more to it?
Makita makes great electric motors. You can get collet adapters for collets too. Plus some manufacturers even offer other collets for their tools. Apparently there is a 1/8" collet available for that model router. But it is very expensive. I’d just get an adapter. Adapters are little collets that fit into the regular one. They work fine. One of the big downsides to running a router as a spindle is the limited availability of different collets. But with just 1/4" and 1/8" you can pretty much cover the bases that you need to.
What I hated the most about running a router as a spindle was the noise it made. But I think the bearings are beat in the router that I used. That’s what may get to you. Listening to the tool going for long periods of time. CNC jobs can take a while to run.
It is easy to sit here and say it won’t bother you. But let’s see you sit there while a router is whining away and say it don’t bother you. Routers running on CNC are perceptually a lot different than when you use them by hand. It was one of those things that I did not see, or rather hear coming.
Ok thanks Paul! Not to worried about the noise, I work in a shop so im used to hearing big cnc machines all day. Plus my other machine has a gear drive and sounds like WW2 warplane, it does sometimes get a little to noisy but I make do. Will probably change it out later down the road, cheap is a large consideration for me right now.
@Will_Dent That’s what I thought with the router. But listening to the router whine on my machine just stressed me out. Routers aren’t built to run continuously either. People that do stick with them run into wear issues. I knew a guy that used one and he said what finally did it for him was he got sick of changing the bearings. He was using pretty high end Porter Cable routers too. Thinking about that contributed to the stress I experienced.
It is like beating a puppy. Everyone can give a puppy a couple swats but it takes a real sadist to stay at it for hours on end. I just didn’t have what it takes for that either.
@Paul_Frederick lol thats pretty Good. Made me laugh guess we will see if I have what it takes.
Why not use one of the eBay spindles from China they are ok very quiet if you get water cooled.
@Paul_Shaw I will have to take another gander at those, last time I looked they were pricy.
@Will_Dent yeah good stuff usually costs. There are some interesting air cooled models now too. https://www.amazon.com/1-5KW-Cooled-Spindle-Variable-Frequency/dp/B010P66BX8
After a little research I think I will look for a water cooled option, router is really loud even on youtube lol
@Will_Dent how loud a router is on a CNC is one of the pitfalls that got me. I certainly did not think it was going to be the issue it turned out to be. There just seems to be a couple factors that add up to make it intolerable though. The duration, and the resonance. A CNC machine won’t subconsciously compensate to make a job more pleasant at all. It just doesn’t care. It’ll happily make the most ungodly racket if it can. Very rude! Inconsiderate even. So it is on us to take the necessary steps to protect our sanity.
So I listened a little and got a cheap cnc spindle from Ebay. Not sure if it will be powerful enough or not but I don’t plan on giving it heavy chip loads anyway. It was cheaper than buying a cnc router and judging by all the videos I saw online sounds way quieter than one too. This isn’t the exact one I bought but they are all roughly the same looking.
It’s just 400W btw
@Will_Dent yeah that is one of the low power air cooled spindles. I have the black one like that. Purportedly 500W (though measuring it I never saw it use more than 100W). They work, and they’re quiet. But they don’t quite spin fast enough for running small diameter tools. The ER 11 collet is nice though. It turns out the fractional collet set is more useful than the metric one. I was hoping the metric collets would fit some fractional shanks sizes. But they really don’t crush down all that much. So I have both sets. I need to get an ER 11 shank that I can put in my mill. So I can use the tooling on that machine too.
@Paul_Frederick I am glad you approve, I almost went and bought a router like my know it all self that I sometimes am but this time I figured I better do my research and kinda glad now that I listened. This seems like a much better option.
@Will_Dent yeah well at least you did not try to use a Dremel. Because a lot of folks start off with something like that. Then they get a router. Then they get a dedicated spindle. Everything works to a lesser degree. There is different qualities of spinning going on.
It is like living with scratchy sheets. You could look at someone doing it and think, yeah they’re doing OK. But once you get in bed yourself you can begin to have second thoughts.
@Paul_Frederick ya no scratchy sheets for me thank you very much lol
@Will_Dent but you are going to miss out on the experience of hearing a router screaming away for an indeterminate length of time. Which can build character. One thing you do need to watch out for is the power supplies of these air cooled routers messing with stepper controls. I’ve seen folks having that problem with them. It didn’t happen to me. The fix seems to be putting filter capacitors across the motor leads. Though some that have the problem claim running a better shielded USB cable helped them out too. It really depends on your machine if you get hit by it, or not. It seems to affect GRBL machines. I run parallel port, which may be why I didn’t have it happen? I watched a video where one guy had it real bad. I mean his machine was done when he flipped the spindle on. But he’s the one that figured out the filter caps, and that cleared it right up for him. To me the better shielded cable is more of a band-aid fix. As the noise is still being emitted.
Alright thats another good note I’m sure I can find a suitable Cap in my assorted parts and yes my neighborhood will miss out on the joy of a screeming router.