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Diy Brushless Spindle
Iv added another diy brushless spindle to my growing collection and thought id post my adventures just in case anyone was in the market for a quiet spindle with low rev torque for cutting plastics and aluminium on a router
my large ER11 spindle has been a top notch work horse and has been the one I use 90% of the time, its taken some heavy abuse even on one occasion cutting two 30mm holes through 20mm of aluminium
with a hole saw... slow and painful but it got me there in the end :eek:
I have on occasion found the ER11 collets limit tooling choices e.g. dove tail/t-slot cutters, thread mills and slit saw arbours tend to have shaft diameters larger than the ER11 capacity of 7mm
Iv managed to procure myself an ER20 C10 collet shaft sooooooo.... I hope to replicate the success of the first spindle with a few minor mods and the ER20 (up to 13mm capacity)
its still a really simple design, the original has one 3200 double row angular contact bearing in the nose, this one will have two 3200 double row angular contacts aprox 10mm apart in the nose and should stop any of the standard motor bearing slop transmitting to the tool end of things.... in reality I cant imagine ill see a difference as the MK 1 spindle works pretty well but I might as well, the theory is there and the bearings are cheep :)
it amazes me that more people have not built this type of spindle but I guess most of you are cutting wood but for anyone cutting plastics and aluminium on a router they make a lot of sense
this one I run on a 12v 350w power supply and get 2800rpm flat out and it maintains enough torque down in the mid hundreds(rpm) to deal with anything iv thrown at it... I know I have vastly under powered it but at 12v the speeds are good and the temperatures (motor windings/bearings and speed controller) remain sensible, besides that, any more power would be wasted on my machines inability to dampen the low frequency resonance.
6mm 4 flute carbide is about my limit when cutting aluminium and with a 60mm radius fly cutter ill get resonance patterns down wind of any holes I pass over unless I take it very easy
(errrrrrrr.... if any of that makes any sense) :smile:
£17:50 100A Brushless Motor Speed Controller RC BEC ESC (make sure you get the BEC version of any speed controller as it eliminates any need for a 5v supply to your servo tester/controller)
£17:09 C10 ER20 100L collet chuck CNC extention shank
£15:00 FOR TWO 3200/5200 DOUBLE ROW ANGULAR CONTACT BEARING 10X30X14
£ 1:89 New RC Helicopter Plane CCPM Servo ESC Checker Tester
£35:11 XYH63-54 250KV 65A Outrunner (excluding postage... cant remember)
(there is a cheep as chips outrunner on ebay for £16:60 delivered
"Outrunner Motor C6364 KV230 Brushless for RC Airplane"
but the one I got was very poorly balanced, the bell was out of true
by a degree or so and I didn't want to bother my arse trying to square it up)
£86:59 (ish) + some elbow grease a couple of lumps of ally and a 12v power supply
in order to get the second bearing pocket square with the first I milled it out under size fitted the first bearing and the ER20 chuck and put the whole assembly in the lath and skimmed the last 0.5mm with a small boring tool then skimmed the outer body to 43mm... worked a treat, all nice and square :)
Attachment 4607Attachment 4597Attachment 4596
Attachment 4609
removing the exsiting spindle shaft can be a pain but this one came out pretty easy
Attachment 4604
cut one of the bearing recesses to a press fit and you should be able to part assemble
your spindle and skim the second bearing recess to an almost perfect alignment
Attachment 4598
the ring with the six holes is there to extend the clamping aria to make it compatible with my exsisting spindle clamp and is not esential (it will help keep the crap out though and looks posh):wink:
Attachment 4601
part assembled again to skim out where the bearing housing sits to a tight true fit
Attachment 4603
servo controller and 100A ESP
Attachment 4599
almost finished.... just needs some drilling and tapping to lock the bearing housing to the acetal mount and were off :smile:
Attachment 4600
looking at this photo has me thinking im developing a bit of a fetish for these brushless motors :twisted:
the blue motor is the "cheep" one that has an extreamly out of balance bell, also in my rush to get it finished i managed to take to much material off the bearing body and had to use aluminum tape to shim it out to fit my clamp :redface: its seen me though a couple of tight spots though and will now be retired as a spare
the small one will run up to a theoretical 48000rpm on 12v but i cant see the bearings lasting long at that speed, i keep daring myself to test it to destruction but i just cant bring myself to do it and i get by with it running below 20000rpm
the yellow one will run upto 10000rpm and i tend to use that for tool grinding
Attachment 4605
Attachment 4606
exsample of some of the work done with these spindles... i love cutting acetal :smile: and i love thread milling M3 in acetal, if things go awry you tend not to snap the tool....
thread milling should be re classified as an extream sport.... its WELL exciting :eek:... or is that just me being sad ?
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Interesting and intriguing!
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
The thing to do with your collection of spindles is index them ... rotary table on the Z-axis with the spindles each mounted 72° apart then just spin it to the one you want - like on a CNC lathe. That basically gets you an automatic tool changer. The only potentially difficult bit is locking the rotary table automatically...and maybe the wiring! Hmm you've given me a project now, as if I didn't have enough to make! Use some sort of rotary switch, or just 5 microswitches to activate each spindle automatically. Even snazzier is if the motors are similar you can use one ESC for the lot, and a bunch of relays to switch between spindles...
I should probably use mine more now I'm almost invariably cutting aluminium on my router. It's only 6000rpm (allegedly 6kW) though which is about half what I'd like...
Attachment 4612
Attachment 4613
Attachment 4614
How much difference do you think using the two double row bearings made versus one? Mine has one double row and something like (can't remember) 5 standard bearings.
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
This motor looks like the same as what you used, and it's cheap:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...idProduct=5144
I'm tempted to get at least 3 of them, plus one ESC, and mount them all along with my existing spindle.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/C10-ER20-1...ht_1682wt_1037
Could get a bit expensive...
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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The thing to do with your collection of spindles is index them ...
hahaha! yep it did cross my mind man but i tend to use the 2000W spindle for almost everything i do and changing spindles is a moment of a job
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How much difference do you think using the two double row bearings made versus one? Mine has one double row and something like (can't remember) 5 standard bearings.
i havnt cut anything with the new one yet jonathan, i was well happy with the old one, i belive it could out perform my machine with the single double row in it but as i was building a new one it seemed silly not to add the second bearing if i could suss a way of keeping the resses perfectly true.... it was a nice surprise when i fitted the shaft and there wasnt any extra friction due to missalignment (its a tough nut to crack)
it will be interesing to see if there is any inprovement but im sure the resonance paterns i get are from my gantry sides
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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This motor looks like the same as what you used, and it's cheap
NICE.... its a bit better than mine.... i must resist i must resist i must... you bugger jonathan!!!!! iv got enough brushless motors
the ER spindle you linked is the one i bought... took about three weeks to turn up but you cant go wrong at that money :)
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Quote:
Originally Posted by
blackburn mark
hahaha! yep it did cross my mind man but i tend to use the 2000W spindle for almost everything i do and changing spindles is a moment of a job
So make more of those ... the prospect of not changing tools manually would be worth it for me. That and it'd look pretty awesome.
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Originally Posted by
blackburn mark
NICE.... its a bit better than mine.... i must resist i must resist i must... you bugger jonathan!!!!! iv got enough brushless motors
Resist that one and get this one, it's 280kV so a bit faster!
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...idProduct=2097
Looking forward to a video of the new one running...
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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So make more of those ... the prospect of not changing tools manually would be worth it for me. That and it'd look pretty awesome.
i could murder you jonathan!!
the power and switching would be the easy part... just make interupted slip rings driven by one ESC
the tricky bit is making the capstan rigid without it weighing a ton and having a masive overhang
i dont believe youv got me thinking on this one... iv also got a million and one things going on :eek: "i must get some sleep at least once this week":eek:
it would be nice to have a 5x tool change though:smile: i could go down the pub swill a couple cut the lawn smoke a couple have a manicure come home change slabs have a couple of hours sleep.............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............
i may ponder this some more but i can sniff a bit of a blind alley coming on :wink:
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Hi Guys...
I've just started to build my router again after a years lay off (got into RC Helis which I fly in B'burn which ate/eats up all my money and sparetime) and have a servo tester (for setting the CCPM swash on the heli up) and spare a few spare ESCs so this is looking interesting!! To start with I'm only looking to cut balsa and ply but as time goes on I'll want to cut plastic and maybe some Ali (when I've made mods to my router.) What would your suggestions be for motor etc? I was thinking of something a little smaller than yours, something like http://www.giantcod.co.uk/xyh5065-27...-p-404605.html with a http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/C8-ER11-10...item2567df6da9 we have an old Colchester Bantam lathe at work so could have a go at the bearing housing...
Cheers, Neil.
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
hi neil, sounds like youll have no problems with the project:smile:
id be tempted to go with an ER11 C8 with a little less overhang
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ER11-8MM-S...item231507033b
if you compare this with the one you linked i think youll know what im driving at... it may make little diffrence when cutting balsa but when aiming to cut ali every little bit of stiffness you can gain will help (i have cut ali with mine)
iv used cheep skate bearing in my ER C8 spindle... iv used belleville washers to put some tention between the two outer races.... i havnt had to change them yet but it only gets light use
if you dont put any tension on those skate bearings the balls will skid and self destruct pretty quickly
Attachment 4771
the layout is not to clear in this picture, youll have to let me know if you dont get it :wink:
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Thanks for the info Mark I'll have a look at that one. Instead of cheap skate bearings could I not use a single double row AC bearing, would I have to pre-tension it? Saying that I've skate bearings coming out of my ears as I'm planning on using them as the linear bearings on all my axis ;) The only problem I can see for me is making the bearing housing, I looked at our lathe this morning and the tooling is crap as it's only used to take the raised face off flanges etc, not sure when it last had a service either. Will get some Ali bar offcut and have a play I think. Hope it's ok as I was planning on machining my leadscrews on it!
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
From a quick search on tinternet it seems that most double row angular contact bearings seem to start at 10mm ID so looks like its the skate bearing route for me...
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Yes I looked for a while for 8mm angular contact bearings but only found one supplier, on eBay in america and not cheap. That was for single row, couldn't find any double row that size.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/708A-8mm-S...0#ht_560wt_905
I wouldn't expect normal bearings to last long if you're drilling ... but nobody really cares as they're so cheap.
Also you can get ER16 collet chucks with 8mm shank:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...ht_4690wt_1080
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Originally Posted by
njhussey
Saying that I've skate bearings coming out of my ears as I'm planning on using them as the linear bearings on all my axis ;)
That's slightly worrying - depends how you go about it.
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Originally Posted by
njhussey
...making the bearing housing, I looked at our lathe this morning and the tooling is crap as it's only used to take the raised face off flanges etc...
Poor workman blames his tools :whistling:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jonathan
Yes I looked for a while for 8mm angular contact bearings but only found one supplier, on eBay in america and not cheap. That was for single row, couldn't find any double row that size.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/708A-8mm-S...0#ht_560wt_905
I wouldn't expect normal bearings to last long if you're drilling ... but nobody really cares as they're so cheap.
I'm only cutting balsa and ply to start with so they will do, but then for the little extra it would cost might be worth getting a larger motor and 10mm spindle?
Looks good, will give more tooling options later on...
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That's slightly worrying - depends how you go about it.
Going down the skate-o-rail option or might just do a quick and dirty joe2006 type to get it up and running...yes I know, i know, i know but I'm doing it on the tightest budget I can and will then upgrade to supported rail etc when I can afford it.
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Poor workman blames his tools :whistling:
Well they're not my tools...but will put an order into RDG for some new ones....unless one of you two fancies giving me a price for making the bearing holder????
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
I maintain there's a tidy little sideliness/embryonic business for someone with the nous to start supplying these brushless spindles in decent numbers to the hobbyist CNC market.
At the minute a CNC hobbyist is faced with Dremel (eeugh) proxxon (nicer but feeble) ...then a leap up to something like kress (good but probably a bit too loud for most...and the price is starting to get chunky).
I reckon if you could knock these out somewhere in between the Proxxon price level (about £90) & Kress level (£150?) ...there'd be good steady demand.
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Originally Posted by
HankMcSpank
I maintain there's a tidy little sideliness/embryonic business for someone with the nous to start supplying these brushless spindles in decent numbers to the hobbyist CNC market.
I'd happily make lots of them, but I've not got time now with being at University.
I will probably make some in the holidays. The issue is which motor to choose as it's always a compromise between collet size and max rpm. The ideal way to do it is get a motor which will take an ER20 chuck and rewind it to get the required, higher, rpm (well, kv strictly).
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
i bought a pair of those 708A bearings but never got around to implimenting them as i ended up using the larger spindles most of the time and the skate bearings seem to be holding up to the amount of use that they get
the 8mm shaft motors make sense if your cutting balsa because of the higher KV choices
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I maintain there's a tidy little sideliness/embryonic business for someone
i did mull the idea for a spell as i belive the larger brushless spindles would knock the knickers off a kress or even one of those posh water cooled chinese jobs at cutting ali and plastics (especialy so if your finishing with a fly cutter) but i get the feeling most people are after cutting wood on their cnc routers and stick to small tooling to cut the odd bit of alli so im not sure there would be a demand myself
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From a quick search on tinternet it seems that most double row angular contact bearings seem to start at 10mm ID
yep! its a crying shame you cant get them smaller :cry: they work like a charm and make the job eeeeasy!!! :smile:
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Originally Posted by
Jonathan
Well what the hell....decided to buy a couple of these as they will last longer and will be better than the skate bearings. Will get the other bits as and when I sell more velcro on fleabay and get more money in.
Mark / Jonathan are either of you up for making a bearing housing for me?? For a price of course....
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Well what the hell....decided to buy a couple
have you worked out a posh (easy) way to keep the lube in and the crap out of these un-sealed bearings ? its one of the reasons i havnt used mine yet :)
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Mark / Jonathan are either of you up for making a bearing housing for me?? For a price of course....
im up to my neck at the moment so hopfully jonathan will pick this up... you will need two stepped washers making unless you can find belleville washers that are 22mm (just under 22mm so they clear the inner housing)
it is probably a good idea if you do a drawing so you can thrash out any problems you might have
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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have you worked out a posh (easy) way to keep the lube in and the crap out of these un-sealed bearings ?
I was going to get them and then spend the time whilst they wing their way from the US looking at ways to do it :-)
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im up to my neck at the moment so hopfully jonathan will pick this up... you will need two stepped washers making unless you can find belleville washers that are 22mm (just under 22mm so they clear the inner housing)
it is probably a good idea if you do a drawing so you can thrash out any problems you might have
I might buy a 50mm dia offcut of Ali and have a tinker on the lathe at work, will check to see if we have any boring tools to play with!
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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I was going to get them and then spend the time whilst they wing their way from the US looking at ways to do it :-)
a man after my own heart :)
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I might buy a 50mm dia offcut of Ali and have a tinker on the lathe at work, will check to see if we have any boring tools to play with!
thats more like it :) if you over size the bore just slap a bit of epoxy in there it should easily take the cutting force (just dont use your posh bearings on that one lol
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Just bought 2 off 2" dia x 50mm bits of Ali.....one to mess about with and the other to do the propper job :whistling:
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I was going to get them and then spend the time whilst they wing their way from the US looking at ways to do it :-)
I'd best get started then as just been informed that they've been shipped :eek:
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Just bought 2 off 2" dia x 50mm bits of Ali.....one to mess about with and the other to do the propper job :whistling:
hahahahahaha!!!!!! i think me n you might have been separated at birth :rofl:
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Well they say you're supposed to measure twice, cut once........never works for me :confused: so I get twice what I need and mess the first one up :naughty:
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Originally Posted by
Jonathan
Yes I looked for a while for 8mm angular contact bearings but only found one supplier, on eBay in america and not cheap. That was for single row, couldn't find any double row that size.
In the smaller sizes they are known as magneto bearings, Arc keeps them, ask for E8's
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Cheers John, when you know what they're called they're everywhere!! Still got to work out how to shield them.......
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Originally Posted by
John S
In the smaller sizes they are known as magneto bearings, Arc keeps them, ask for E8's
Hmm, I even looked there... must be blind:
http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalo...-Ball-Bearings
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Originally Posted by
njhussey
Still got to work out how to shield them.......
Aluminium disk or whatever with only a very very small clearence - enough to stop it touching, but not so big that it lets lots of dust in. I believe the term is aluminium labyrinth. Any seal which touches is going to generate a lot of heat due to friction.
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Originally Posted by
Jonathan
Or...
http://simplybearings.co.uk/shop/p42...duct_info.html
or...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/E8-MAGNETO...item2eaeaac383
etc.....etc...
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Aluminium disk or whatever with only a very very small clearence - enough to stop it touching, but not so big that it lets lots of dust in. I believe the term is aluminium labyrinth. Any seal which touches is going to generate a lot of heat due to friction.
Was going to see if I could reverse engineer a shield like on the 608RS bearings....or how about http://simplybearings.co.uk/shop/p24...duct_info.html but not sure what speed it's rated to....food for thought anyway!
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Originally Posted by
njhussey
Yes, easy once you know...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
njhussey
I doubt rubber seals are appropriate for the speed this will be running at. The bearings apparently already get hot, so a seal like that is just going to make it worse. I used some on my wind turbine, for each blade, and they add a lot of friction...but it didn't matter there as it's only a few rpm.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jonathan
I doubt rubber seals are appropriate for the speed this will be running at. The bearings apparently already get hot, so a seal like that is just going to make it worse. I used some on my wind turbine, for each blade, and they add a lot of friction...but it didn't matter there as it's only a few rpm.
Just found out they are only good for 1000 rpm....damn!!! Just had a brainwave tho! Will contact our pump suppliers and see what they use...if they run them a 2 pole then that's 2900 rpm so might be better...will put some feelers out.
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Just been trying (and I stress trying!!!) to do some machining of my lead screws in my lunch break...think I'll get someone else to do it! The jaws are worn and it takes ages to get them to clamp so it spins true and I had to shim the cutting tool so it was somewhere near the correct height...results of 3/4 hr below lol
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Just been trying (and I stress trying!!!) to do some machining
owch!
you need to hassle your gaffer to let you do a nip n tuck on that lath :smile:
it might cut alli a bit better than that (fingers crossed)
what outside diameter are you going for on your bearing housing ?
i went for 43mm so that if it all didnt work out with my brushless spindles i could just drop a kress into the 43mm clamp..... its worth doing some research because if i was starting again i think would go slightly larger than 43mm to avoid an issue whereby the brushless motor mounting screws (on the larger motor) clash with the 43mm di making it a bitch to simply drill all the way through or cut a flange to mount the housing to the motor (i think the 10mm shafted motor mounting screws are 22mm from the centre)
its worth thinking about because if i had gone 50mm as a standard for all my spindles life might have been a little more simple
Attachment 4786
i ended up turning the 50mm one down to 43mm to match the other two
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
blackburn mark
owch!
you need to hassle your gaffer to let you do a nip n tuck on that lath :smile:
it might cut alli a bit better than that (fingers crossed)
hmmm I'll try one (need to buy a boring bar as don't have one) and see what happens. From the finish I got you'd have thought I'd stuck it in a drill and used a file!!
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what outside diameter are you going for on your bearing housing ?
i went for 43mm so that if it all didnt work out with my brushless spindles i could just drop a kress into the 43mm clamp..... its worth doing some research because if i was starting again i think would go slightly larger than 43mm to avoid an issue whereby the brushless motor mounting screws (on the larger motor) clash with the 43mm di making it a bitch to simply drill all the way through or cut a flange to mount the housing to the motor (i think the 10mm shafted motor mounting screws are 22mm from the centre)
its worth thinking about because if i had gone 50mm as a standard for all my spindles life might have been a little more simple
Attachment 4786
i ended up turning the 50mm one down to 43mm to match the other two
Weeeeell....as it happens I've bought 50mm rounds so was going to stick to that...got to see if they've got the external jaws first else I'll get one of our local friendly machinists to make it...
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Got my 2" Ali pieces today, too late to do any machining in my lunch break but might come in early tomorrow to have a play :naughty:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
blackburn mark
iv used cheep skate bearing in my ER C8 spindle... iv used belleville washers to put some tention between the two outer races.... i havnt had to change them yet but it only gets light use
Mark, where did you get your belleville washers from? Was going to stick a couple in between my single row AC bearings?
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I'll have to wait until I get the motor for the through mounting hole dimensions but was thinking of something along these lines.....
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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Mark, where did you get your belleville washers from? Was going to stick a couple in between my single row AC bearings?
eeeerrrr, dunno?? pretty sure i got them on ebay.... i just did a search and they are all coming up USA which is a bit of a bind, iv got some left (8.2mm inside 18.9mm outside diameter) so measure the distance your going to have between your bearings ill send you enough to fit that gap (n youll owe me a favour :smile:... its not the washers, its the dragging my arse over to the post office that youll owe me for :wink:)
iv used 12 washers and compressing them about 0.5mm (very light, less than 1kg) i guess you could be a little more aggressive with those A/C bearings but im not sure to what advantage ?? id play it safe and keep it light... if you get any signs of movement slop chatter add a shim etc.
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I've found some at Bellville Springs...Part code: D18842
Price: £10.33 per 100 pcs, Postage: £5.50 with a min order charge of £15...could always flog the rest on fleabay lol.
I think I've left a 3mm gap between the bearings atm but am open to suggestions!
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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I think I've left a 3mm gap between the bearings atm but am open to suggestions!
your not going to get many washers in there :eek:
id try to get them a little further apart so you can get at least a few pairs of washers twixed
i know its a bit late now but if i was starting from scratch id use up the full length of the ER shaft
i didnt do this on mine, i have 22mm of shaft protruding out of the motor bell, i could have made the bearing bell 22mm longer utilsing the theoretical extra stability however the best performing spindle i have only has one double row A/C at the nose so i guess the diffrence may be negligible for our aplication
the new ER20 with two double row is suffering with resonance when cutting quite hard at the moment, something is rolling or skidding in there.
that should stop when i do my final strip and loctite.... errr.... maybe
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
Well if I'm going to use the ER16 x 8mm (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ER16-8MM-S...item19c9b3098b) then I've got 100mm of shaft to play with. The motor I'm proposing to use (http://www.giantcod.co.uk/xyh5065-32...-p-404606.html) is an XYH 50-65 so 50mm dia and 65mm long, that only leaves me 35mm to play with. If I have a 5mm cap/lid (whatever) and leave 3mm at the back I'll have 28mm to house the bearings (7mm wide each) and the belleville washers so I'll have 14mm to fill up....better or too much?
Getting into Google Sketchup now, but takes a long time to draw anything as my laptop is slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww..........
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Re: Diy brushless spindle
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so I'll have 14mm to fill up....better or too much?
sounds better to me :)
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Getting into Google Sketchup now, but takes a long time to draw anything as my laptop is slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww..........
worth it though... when im designing something with production in mind i can spend hours just looking at the same drawing to see if it can be stream lined or knock some of the pain out of production and make it look posh etc etc etc....