[DY123]

I was thinking about replacing the entire head with one of the water cooled high speed spindles.

I looked at the ones over at Ungra cnc. Their model has a pair of angular contact bearings at the collet end. A lot of the builders are using these on CNC routers. Curious how it would work on a benchtop mill.

My question is, how would this type of motor work for Z operations? Drilling, etc?

Thanks

[RTTIM]

From the specs it looks like the minimum working speed is 6000 rpm - might be too fast for many milling applications.

[DY123]

I was looking at the water cooled ones. Seems that they can go to lower RPM's.

[wizard]

I was thinking about replacing the entire head with one of the water cooled high speed spindles.

Nothing wrong with that. Well as long as the spindle is matched to the work you are doing.

I looked at the ones over at Ungra cnc.

Booked marked that site right away. Some of his prices are extremely cheap, surprising even.

Their model has a pair of angular contact bearings at the collet end. A lot of the builders are using these on CNC routers. Curious how it would work on a benchtop mill.

You can be as curious as you want to be but nobody can help you here without knowing what the mill will be used for. Such an installation could be very much justified for one user and a horror story for the next.

My question is, how would this type of motor work for Z operations? Drilling, etc?

You do realize that is impossible to answer right? I mean really what do you plan to drill, what size holes & etc. Knowing this you will have you answers yourself.

Thanks

What you need to answer is what is the power output at lower speeds. If they are calculating power output at top speed you will have very little tongue at lower speeds. The spindles are really designed for router type machines, thus I would suspect best performance will be had at the higher speed settings.

Think about this in the context of drilling operations in steel. Depending upon hole size, the tyro of steel and other factors you may well need a speed of well under 1000 RPM. This is a very small fraction of the top speed on these spindles, you might not have enough tongue to drill a half inch hole. If your primary usage is not profiling or routing I'd have to suggest getting the manufactures specs for each spindle so that you will know how it fits your expected usage.

I hope you understand that this question can't be answered with the info supplied. The spindles look to be very nice and could be extremely useful in a number of applications.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Those spindles appear to all have 3-phase AC motors, which means they will have constant torque at any speed up to their (unspecified) base speed, and constant power above their base speed. This means power will drop linearly with RPM below base speed. So, the important question is: What is their base speed? If, for example, their base speed is 10K RPM, then at 1000 RPM they will have 1/10th their rated power, so a 1HP spindle would have only 1/10th HP. If 25K RPM is the base speed, then at 1000 RPM you'd have only 1/25th HP.

Regards,
Ray L.

[DY123]

I just heard back from UGRA. They said 6,000 rpm was the minimum for the water cooled ones too.

Guess I was trying to figure out a way to have an everything mill. Hi speed low speed and everything in between. Probably why people have more than one mill.

Kind of reminds me of a phrase in my industry...."Strong. Light. Cheap. Pick Two."

I'd like to do aluminum, plastic, tooling board.....but every once in a while my dad wants something for his boat made of stainless or who knows. Thats the one thing that gives me headaches.

[wizard]

I suspect but don't know for sure that these motors/spindles are designed to run at router speeds.

Those spindles appear to all have 3-phase AC motors, which means they will have constant torque at any speed up to their (unspecified) base speed, and constant power above their base speed. This means power will drop linearly with RPM below base speed. So, the important question is: What is their base speed? If, for example, their base speed is 10K RPM, then at 1000 RPM they will have 1/10th their rated power, so a 1HP spindle would have only 1/10th HP. If 25K RPM is the base speed, then at 1000 RPM you'd have only 1/25th HP.

Regards,
Ray L.

[wizard]

I just heard back from UGRA. They said 6,000 rpm was the minimum for the water cooled ones too.

I'm not surprised at all that that is the specified range. They might actually run slower but with torque so low as to not be usable.

Guess I was trying to figure out a way to have an everything mill. Hi speed low speed and everything in between. Probably why people have more than one mill.

An age old problem. All is not lost though, making a swappable head is very possible.

Kind of reminds me of a phrase in my industry...."Strong. Light. Cheap. Pick Two."

I'd like to do aluminum, plastic, tooling board.....but every once in a while my dad wants something for his boat made of stainless or who knows. Thats the one thing that gives me headaches.

If that is the case you might want to make long term plans for a router build.

[hive8]

Would it be possible that the community here can design a spindle going from lets say 200RPM to 15000RPM... I have been looking too to replace the complete spindle...

[RTTIM]

You might take a look at Hoss' G0704 thread. His latest addition is an auxiliary high speed spindle. It's a retrofit of one he did previously for the 2, so should be adaptable to other mills.

If your need for high speed is only for occasional use, this might work for you. This is what I plan to do.....

Tim

[hive8]

I do mostly aluminium and brass... but the tools vary from 2mm to 12mm mills

[DY123]

@ cncmakers001

Are you a manufacturer/agent that can make this type of spindle?

200 rpm to 10,000-15,000 rpm?

[hive8]

Not only the spindle but the motor as well... , cncmakers001 please can you explain a little more...

[hoss2006]

cncmakers is a spammer fellas, you'll notice his post has been removed.
Hoss

[DY123]

Hey Hoss,

Thanks for the heads up.

I think i'm just going to get the G0704 and upgrade the motor and add belt drive.

Have to buy your cd to cut through all the trial and error.

One question though, how easy/hard was it to upgrade the bearings to angular contact?

I saw another youtube video of a guy doing it and he seemed to have lots of problems.

[cncmakers001]

Interesting. since when and WHY I become a spammer? is it some kind of Discrimination?? any one knows the reason? thanks.

[cncmakers001]

@ cncmakers001

Are you a manufacturer/agent that can make this type of spindle?

200 rpm to 10,000-15,000 rpm?

Hi, I am not a manufacturer of this spindle, just know something about it.

[691175002]

Technically he is right, there is a high probability that if the motor was wound with more poles you could lower the RPM and increase torque. You cannot widen the range of speed though so it would end up being something like 3000-12000 which is still okay but not that great.

A lot of the low torque performance actually comes from the motor driver. If you have an encoder on motor you can perform smarter (vector) commutation which will maintain your torque to basically zero RPM (Note a motor with an encoder is just a servo, your spindle is now a big AC servo).

That kind of stuff is big bucks and you need a fairly large motor to be effective at low speeds (torque is constant so power decreases with speed).

[hoss2006]

Interesting. since when and WHY I become a spammer? is it some kind of Discrimination?? any one knows the reason? thanks.

Take it up with the admin they would know not me but my guess would be because you just post a link to your website to sell something time and again violating their advertising policy.
Hoss

[hoss2006]

Hey Hoss,

Thanks for the heads up.

I think i'm just going to get the G0704 and upgrade the motor and add belt drive.

Have to buy your cd to cut through all the trial and error.

One question though, how easy/hard was it to upgrade the bearings to angular contact?

I saw another youtube video of a guy doing it and he seemed to have lots of problems.

It's not hard at all, the only sticky part comes if the bearings aren't a slip fit like they were for me.
Slip fit doesn't mean slop either, the bearing has just enough clearance to be pressed on by hand or with light force.
The upper bearing needs to be a slip fit so that preload can be applied.
If they don't go on easily a light sanding of the spindle lands with emery can usually do the job.
The lower can be mounted by freezing the spindle and warming the bearing but you have one shot to get it all the way on or you're in a bad place like you may have seen in someones video.
Luckily they aren't too expensive unless you're going for the ABEC-7's.
Bearing Upgrade
Hoss