[MarkedOne]

I hope I'm posting in right section, this place is huge and I'm a little lost.

Hello. I'm trying to restore a Gerber D200 CNC router on a hobby (cheap) level, since I'm from Eastern side of Europe shipping here from US costs an arm and a leg, so I was looking for cheaper solutions. This router was laying in my garage for the last 7-10 years and I have no idea how my Father got it. Router is missing all electronics, but this is the thing I can handle, the biggest problem right now is the spindle motor. Being in this side Europe everything we have here is in metric, while CNC router was made in US. I think it still has original spindle motor Porter Cable 86902, sadly routers 3.5 inch are unavailable here. Original collet is shattered, replacement with shipping costs 50-70 USD and only comes in imperial size for bit shanks. Original nut should not fit ER type collets (did not test yet) and it has proprietary nut tread M25X1.25 or something like that, so I can't get an ER collet nut. Changing whole collet chuck is also hard, as there are no chuks with 0.5-20 UNF thread other than drill ones.

So my question is, what should I do?
Go for new 3.5" spindle motor and spend a fortune on shipping? If so, what would you recommend with ER collets?
Buy a drill chuck and hope for the best? This way it's really cheap.
Throw away 3.5" mount and try to fit 80mm design?

Thanks in advance.

[jueston]

i think you will be much happier if you change to 80MM design that you can get without shipping from america, and when you need parts for it those will be available from your side of the world. but i guess it depends on the cost of machining to make that happen...

[Dragonfly]

I don't know how the spindle is mounted but one can always get creative and find a way to mount a different one. Searched the web but found only one video with D200 and the mount is not visible well enough.
BTW, which part of EE are you from?

[awerby]

That Porter-cable router's nothing special, just replace it with something you can get locally which has collets that will fit metric tooling. 3-phase spindles work better, last longer and are quieter than hand routers repurposed as CNC spindles, but they are more expensive and require a Variable Frequency Drive to run. You're probably going to have to find someone who will make you a bracket to fit whatever you decide on, unless you get something that comes with one.

Whatever you do, don't even think about replacing the collet system with a Jacobs chuck - they aren't concentric enough for anything but drilling, and tend to loosen in the middle of a job.

[handlewanker]

Hi, a photo of your router spindle mounting set-up would help us to advise you how to modify the existing spindle arrangement to something you can fit and find parts for.

I would think that if the existing spindle.... whatever..... is out of wack then any spindle available on EBAY would do the job.
Ian.

[Shelby5041]

Why would gerber include a junk 1 speed low powered porter cable 86902 with their gerber 200 cnc?

I hope I'm posting in right section, this place is huge and I'm a little lost.

Hello. I'm trying to restore a Gerber D200 CNC router on a hobby (cheap) level, since I'm from Eastern side of Europe shipping here from US costs an arm and a leg, so I was looking for cheaper solutions. This router was laying in my garage for the last 7-10 years and I have no idea how my Father got it. Router is missing all electronics, but this is the thing I can handle, the biggest problem right now is the spindle motor. Being in this side Europe everything we have here is in metric, while CNC router was made in US. I think it still has original spindle motor Porter Cable 86902, sadly routers 3.5 inch are unavailable here. Original collet is shattered, replacement with shipping costs 50-70 USD and only comes in imperial size for bit shanks. Original nut should not fit ER type collets (did not test yet) and it has proprietary nut tread M25X1.25 or something like that, so I can't get an ER collet nut. Changing whole collet chuck is also hard, as there are no chuks with 0.5-20 UNF thread other than drill ones.

So my question is, what should I do?
Go for new 3.5" spindle motor and spend a fortune on shipping? If so, what would you recommend with ER collets?
Buy a drill chuck and hope for the best? This way it's really cheap.
Throw away 3.5" mount and try to fit 80mm design?

Thanks in advance.