Chinese spindles

[Colin Barron]

Has anyone experience of purchasing a spindle directly from China. I recently purchased a hifi dac directly from hong kong and it all went smoothly so i was tempted to try my luck with a 2.2kw spindle. I looked at elte and colombo, i think the cost is about 850 quid but the stuff from china was roughly 300 to 500 us dollars although i am not sure yet whether i am comparing like with like. Anyone used alibaba?

[Lee Roberts]

There is a good seller on ebay called linearmotionbearings2008, he has these spindles for sale. I along with a few other members here have purchased from him with no problems. No import tax or anything like that yet, that i know of anyway.

Lee

[Colin Barron]

cheap as chips, was the water cooling not a bit of a problem?

[mike]

hi
i too have my eye on one of these spindles albeit from a different seller (cheaper) but i have delt with chai from linearmotion many times ( bulk orders of bearings/ shaft support ect) & it is always very smooth & also fast too considdering it is from china, what are the advantages of these spindles apart from the high speed? one thing i am worried about is the ceramic bearings in them one tool crash & they could be reuined how are you intending on mounting it lee? single or double mount

[routercnc]

Hi Colin,

I'd gone for one of those from linearmotionbearings2008, and have just got it working. Pleased with it so far, although not ready for cutting yet. Chai is prompt with replies to emails.

After much research it would seem they don't need much cooling at all. A mere 20 litres / hours is all, which is tiny compared to a windscreen pump of 200 litres / hours or CPU water cooling pump of 500 litres / hours. Simplest solution, tried by several people, is using 5 litres of water in a metal bucket, hooked up to a small aquarium pump. Relies on passive cooling and works well by all accounts.
I'm planning to add a digital temperature readout to my cooling circuit (~£5 ebay). Might be possible for someone clever to link this to an over temperature estop in Mach3, but that is for another day.

Here's my build log so far:
http://www.mycncuk.com/forums/showth...upgrade!/page2

If this puts you off, there is always the aircooled option, although these are lower max power, and are a bit noisier (fan) but still nothing like a router.

Don't forget you also need an invertor to drive them. I went for a German VFD (Moeller), but Hitachi are also popular. I didn't fancy the Chinese VFDs after reading about quality problems with them.

Hi Mike,
The speed for the Chinese spindles is similar to a router, so the advantage for me is the low noise levels. They also claim a very low runout.

[mike]

how about the ER 20 collet what size are the restricted to?

[audioandy]

Mike/Colin

I have one of the 2.2Kw water cooled spindles,the ER20 goes upto 13mm shaft size so you should be ok.

The only thing I would warn against are the VFD's, what I know now I would/will get a good quailty one.

My control pad has stopped working which I dont use because I have Mach controlling start/stop and speed and I have read other people having similar problems.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Andy

[Colin Barron]

Thanks Andy the best price so far is from linearmotionbearings2008 at
192 pounds which sounds ok. They say the bearings are Japanese angular contact Z4 grade.
All these spindles look the same to me!
There are plenty of inverters on ebay for not too much money and good makes like Mitsubishi, omron and moeller.
Are the ER20 collets detachable and maybe fit better quality ones in the future?

[Colin Barron]

Please could someone tell me are these motors 240v three phase squirrel cage motors?
I have purchased Mitsubisi FR-E520-2.2K inverter with a 3phase 240v out which i had not expected.

[Colin Barron]

a bit cheaper but cant comment on the bearings etc
http://www.dhgate.com/water-cool-2-2...a5f6e4eec.html#

This price is amaizing, i looked at another spindle from keri where they say there 2x7005c and 2x7004c NSK bearings in the spindle. I googled 7005c bearing and the cost was about 100 pounds each. It makes you wonder how they do it?
Keri was $335 approx 215 pounds for their RKS2200, 2.2kw spindle. Has anyone any experience of buying off keri?
The weight of theirs is 10kg where some i notice are only 8kg.
I Contacted Keri to ask why they were more expensive and this was thei reply:
Dear Colin,

We saw the link that you sent in last email. the spindle in the link is quite cheap ones ,but they are too much different from our spindles .

Common Spindles with only 2 or 3 cheap bearings inside ,and the weight of the spindle 2.2kw no more than 5-6kgs ...the speed of the spindles are unadjustable or very hard to operate , also the runover of the cheap spindles are over 0.005mm or even more .We do not recommend to you these unreliable ,unstable spindles as this is very important part on the machine.

What we are offering you is the really good quality spindles with 4 famous brand NSK bearings inside ,and the weight of the spindle 2.2kw is over 10kgs with packing.The precision of the spindle is much better and stable. the run off of the spindle is within 0.001mm. The speed of the spindle is easily regulated by the driving inverter (VFD) from 6000-24000rpm.

Frankly our price are not the best on the market , just medium ,but it is quite cost-effective as for a spindle, the most important motion part on a CNC machine.We are selling hundreds of this high qualoty spindles every week.To pay a little bit more ,you will save lots of energy in worrying about the malfunctions and problems . After all ,you are buying a machine part.you don't need a cheap item which will cause many troubles in processings ,right?

Colin , How many pics of spindle 2.2kw you need ?We can offer you 10% discount if you order 10 pics a time. If you don;t need the VFD , the postage for 1 pic of RKS2200 spindle is US$85 only.