Quote Originally Posted by Clive S View Post
Air cooled spindles are generally very noisy. Not sure why you think the water cooled ones are going to put water all over the place as they are fed with 6mm tubing and the pump and water container can be anywhere off the machine. They are also quiet .

Re the plates I would use 20mm and if you don't want to machine it use cast as that will be flatter.

Have you checked out if any of the bolts clash with each other ie on the bearing blocks for Z and Y
Thanks Clive,

Point taken re the air-cooled spindle. Water cooling seemed like one extra thing to worry about but perhaps the noise issue will make it worth it. I spent some time with a local CNC machine today which was using the Kress 1050 spindle - air cooled. Whilst not particularly loud (certainly compared to a router) it could certainly have been quieter. I don't see many people using 3kw water-cooled spindles, nor that many places to buy - I wonder why?

Re the plates, what if I used 20mm just on the gantry sides? That seems to be the critical point - surely the z-axis won't matter too much (if anything, the thicker plates will move the spindle further away, creating more torque on the gantry?). Another idea I had was just to bolt some extrusion vertically to the 15mm gantry sides to stiffen them up a bit.

I was going to buy my plates from here: https://www.aluminiumwarehouse.co.uk...e-cut-to-order
I can't see cast here - is there somewhere I can go to specifically buy cast aluminium?

Also I see 2 alloys - 5083 & 6082T6 - but I don't know the difference and which is best for machining. Biggest machining job I really want to take on is drilling holes on my drill press and tapping them.