All,
I have not been on the zone in several years. I have been through a couple different jobs and have most recently started working a new job. Most everyone here believes that you should not run CNC machines at their max RPM for fear of burning up the spindle. They tend to limit the machines to 80% of what the manufacturer says the machines capable is. I believe this is complete nonsense as it makes no sense on many fronts. First and foremost the machine was designed to run at that RPM and if it would damage it to run at that RPM the manufacturer should have set the max to something lower. Secondly when I buy a machine that goes 10,000 rpm I have an expectation that the machine will run at that RPM without issue. Lastly, by arbitrarily limiting machines to 80% of their potential we are costing the company money and leaving up to 20% on the table.

I was just curious on people thoughts on running machines up to their max spindle speed. I realize many people have strong thoughts on this but what data or official documentation is their to support this either way?