Kress Spindle upgrade to a 2kw

Hi people,

I'm about to upgrade my kress spindle to a 2kw or over spindle. I need a 1/2 inch collet so I'm guessing that would be an ER20 ?
ebay as you know has loads of Chinese spindles but is there anything I should be looking for when choosing?

Also any advice on water or air cooled would be great. The least noise the better !

Finally, is there anyway I can control spindle speed from mach 3 ?
Currently switched by the breakout board relay but I wondered if there was a vfd and a control board that talks to each other to make this happen ?

Many thanks
M Pecker

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Metal pecker

Finally, is there anyway I can control spindle speed from mach 3 ?
Currently switched by the breakout board relay but I wondered if there was a vfd and a control board that talks to each other to make this happen ?

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I use these and find they work well however as people have pointed out before there are probably better alternatives.

SYSTEM1
System45 (spindle boards are at the bottom of the page)

I'm using Mach3, ABB vfd, 2.2kW spindle. The spindle board plugs into the breakout board socket so no extra wiring and it supplies 0-10v dc to the vfd for speed control.
In Mach3 I have the motor tuning/spindle set so that the reported speed is the same as the actual speed and I use the relay on the spindle board to send a 'RUN' signal to the vfd.
So when running G-code the speed is determined by the S instruction, e.g. S20000, in my case the spindle would run at 20000 rpm, M5 switches the relay, I always have it set to run forward (you don't want reverse direction). I also have set in Mach3 a delay of 10 seconds (5 secs would be okay in reality) to allow the spindle to reach full speed before the G-code starts the first instruction.

The standard Chinese supplied vfd's would work just as well with this sytem.

What are you milling mostly? If milling metal alot you might want to look at the 3kw spindle even though it does not give you a bigger ER collet (cheap buggers a ER25 would be so much more useful) it does give you a rather good increase in torque at the lower end of things and certain metals prefer things a bit slower to get nice good chips to be produced. Just a suggestion. -Michael

Thanks Eddy,
Sorry, I haven't been on here for ages.
thanks for your reply. I think I need to pretty much strip all the electrcs out and start again with my machine now.
I now keep having problems with my twin ballscrew steppers losing steps sending the gantry out of alignment.
The physical wiring connections are ok, Velocity and acceleration on the motor tuning have been reduced.
I mostly use the machine for drilling shelf peg holes for kitchen cabinets, each panel has 20 holes approx, it usually gets through 4 or 5 panels but then drops steps !
Any clues ?
Because it is used for work, I could justify up to about £2000 budget on upgrading it particularly as I want closed loop steppers and a decent breakout board with a spindle speed control.

Many thanks

Hi Michael, I mostly use the machine for drilling holes and cutting 18mm melamine faced chipboard for kitchen cupboard construction but I would like it to be able to cut 40mm oak worktops and belfast sink cut-outs etc
Many thanks