El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

[Desertboy]

Guys, has anyone got any experience or knowledge of these spindles I stumbled across?

They are 80mm body and 220v/2.2kw/400hz so should be a straight drop in/drop out replacement (ideal as it makes it relatively easy to switch to 24,000rpm spindle if needed for composites etc). The difference is that they are 1,500-12,000rpm which would be a lot more suitable RPM range for milling plastics, foams, metals etc and opens up the potential to look at thread mills, reamers and makes drilling more viable.

Only downside is they are significantly more expensive than the 24,000rpm garden variety... which makes it less appealing to take a punt!

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Low-...460.0.0.rut9B3

Good find

[Zeeflyboy]

Managed to sneak in a little play time after work today... made the bottom plate for the Z-axis




Top side done:




Rear side - just used 3 dowel pins to locate it this time




Finished part:






Next up will be the back plate, hopefully have time to do that tomorrow after work.

I also re-designed the top bearing support plate as per the advice of routercnc to allow one of the bearings to float into place. For now I've just 3D printed the bearing float plate... Thought it was interesting as I'm using my favourite material for actual functional parts - a PETG Carbon fibre infused filament which is brilliant to work with. Very stiff and strong (as the actress said to the bishop!) and very dimensionally stable too. Finishes nicely with a little light sanding too.