I disconnected the belts and the noise is still there. I know for sure its not the spindle motor bearings as they were just replaced. Im 99% sure that its just gear slap although the video may not show that. When I turn the motor or encoder spline back and forth I hear a slap from the gears right under the encoder spline. Now if I spin the motor by hand fast enough for it to get a few revolutions the gear teeth are engaged with each other and I dont hear the slap. So I need to figure out why the gear slap is there when the machine is running. Can something electronically cause the motor to slow down and speed up for a split second causing the gears to slap like that? Im talking like milliseconds......just enough for the gear teeth to lose contact with each other then recontact causing that slap noise. The RPM display only fluctuates 1 rpm so it seems as if the encoder motor is ok but who knows. The encoder belt looks good, no missing teeth...I dont have a new one to compare it to so I cant tell how worn it is if at all.
I have a VF3 of the same model year and its so quiet you can barely hear it running. I would consider swapping the encoder motor from that machine but I cant be down both machines right now....I only have 2.