Where's the cheapest place to buy a Kress 1050?

[Jonathan]

Why, well the minimum speed is 5K on the Kress but i read on the zone of people using the Chinese spindle being used at 200 RPM

also the speed would be fully adjustable within Mach UNLIKE the Kress

Also a lot quieter than the Kress

Thanks for the link, though I think you've both persuaded me now. Persuaded me to wait at least.
I'm not too bothered about <5000rpm as my brushless motor spindle will do up to 6000 at much higher power. Having said that I don't know what the runout will be like. Maybe I should make it, flog it and then buy the spindle you're suggesting.

What power rating do you think would be suitable? 1.5kw? I take it they're rated by input power, not output - if so what is the efficiency?

£700 for a Bridgeport sounds good. They had two at school (sold 1 last year ), no comparison between them and my milling machine...I'm jealous!

My mill was 300, plus 20 and 2 cups of tea for them to deliver it. Another 20 for a massive milling vice, and yes...lots lots more on tooling. Not bad considering it's £800 new:
http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/cgi-local/...225C#aCMD1225C

[M250cnc]

What power rating do you think would be suitable? 1.5kw? I take it they're rated by input power, not output - if so what is the efficiency?

Well i would go for the 1.5KW as that is 2HP like i say someone used his at 200 RPM and they can run up to 25K also the higher the HP the more expensive the inverter.

Phil

[Jonathan]

Well i would go for the 1.5KW as that is 2HP like i say someone used his at 200 RPM and they can run up to 25K also the higher the HP the more expensive the inverter.

Phil

I might be buying one of these sooner than I thought. My really cheap router stalled today for no apparent reason, and emmited a little smoke. It still runs, so the motor is fine but I think the collet chuck is damaged. It's not holding the cutter on centre now.
When it stalled I couldn't stop everything fast enough so it bent the 8mm steel bar that I was using to extend the length of the cutter - shows how powerful the steppers are to do that!

Anyway, I think I'll get this one from this seller:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1-5KW-WATER-CO...item3cb17211ec

It's the cheapest I can find. He's not got much feedback though...

Maybe get a 2.2Kw one:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-2KW-WATER-CO...item3a61c3d4cf

Or is that overkill?

Does anyone here have a dimensioned drawing of one of these spindles? What does the 180mm length correspond to exactly - as in does it include the chuck/wire etc?

[M250cnc]

When it stalled I couldn't stop everything fast enough so it bent the 8mm steel bar that I was using to extend the length of the cutter - shows how powerful the steppers are to do that!

Jonathan i think you need to learn some safety. Extending the lenght of the cutter using an 8mm bar seems an extremely dangerous thing to do. You are not wearing any safety gear (Full Face Shield) would be a good idea and ear defenders, i know to my cost how stupid it is not to wear ear defenders .

My guess is centrifugal force took over and bent the bar not the power from the stepper,there is a reason that the cutters are not too long, and that is for safety/stability reasons. I'm sorry if i seem to be having a go at you personally but you seem an accident waiting to happen.

So this rant is also aimed at the people who think machines running at high speed are safe, they are not especially when you modify them to be even more dangerous.

The last thing people on here want to hear is of you having an accident or anyone else for that matter.

Rant over
Phil

[Jonathan]

Sorry I was ambiguous. The 25mm length of the extension piece that was in the router is 8mm, and that's what bent. The rest of the bar was 12.7mm. It wasn't centrifugal force...what happened was the router stalled and started only spinning at a few rps whilst gantry was still moving at cutting speed. That meant the cutter holder was basically bent by the X axis motors against the face of the MDF it was cutting ... naturally it bent at the weakst point. I hit the stop buttons pretty quickly, but evidently not quick enough. I underestimated how much extra force it put on the cutter having it 50mm further out.

I've used the same 'extender' in the milling machine lots of times before, admittedly at a lower rpm - yet similar feedrate so probably similar cutting force. If it wasn't for the router stalling I think it would have been fine - I wonder why the router did stall? It had only been going about 30 seconds. I've dismantled the router and checked the brushes/bearings and they all seem fine.

I was wearing saftey glasses and ear defenders - got the latter for Christmas! I agree that one should be conscious of saftey with these things (hence my recent thread about dust extraction!)...I once witnessed someone at school on a lathe (identical model to yours incidentally) put a long piece of 1" steel tube in the chuck to face the end, but didn't support the other end. As you say, centrifugal force took over and bent the steel tube to 90degrees, and smashed the cover off the lathe headstock that protects the autofeed gears shearing a couple of M10 (ish) bolts in the process. The teacher was NOT happy! We had health and saftey in the workshop drummed in to us since the very beginning - using lathe when I was 12.

'accident waiting to happen.'
Is there something else I've said that makes you say that?

My rant over...

[M250cnc]

I underestimated how much extra force it put on the cutter having it 50mm further out.

I've used the same 'extender' in the milling machine lots of times before, admittedly at a lower rpm - yet similar feedrate so probably similar cutting force.

I was wearing saftey glasses and ear defenders - got the latter for Christmas! I agree that one should be conscious of saftey with these things...
'accident waiting to happen.'

Is there something else I've said that makes you say that?

My rant over...

Your youtube videos show you holding parts while being routed and about to break free from the surrounding material, do you call that safe ?

50mm extension is just way too long and are you are gonna admit its made of soft steel

Here is a pic of an extension i made for a Makita 2HP router , on the left is the original nut and on the right is the extension, the extension is the same diameter as the shaft so SAFE anything less is dangerous.

New rant over.
Phil

[Jonathan]

Your youtube videos show you holding parts while being routed and about to break free from the surrounding material, do you call that safe ?

I agree that's not the best of ideas - I don't think I'm the only person on youtube guilty of that, though that's no reason to do it. I was careful in that case not to put my fingers close to the cutter. I made sure the last cut was very light and plenty of clearance so little chance of anything unexpected. Generally I do put tabs on the parts which are routed out at the end to avoid that, or in the case of PCBs stick them down with double sided tape. On the milling machine I've put a bolt through the part in the past to stop it escaping.

It was made from 316 stainless steel (not nice stuff to machine, work hardens), though I'll admit that was mainly because that's what I had at the time. I made it 8mm as that's the biggest collet the router can take. The nut and collet are separate parts on my router, so it would be tricky to make a mount like yours.


The safety things I won't have much idea is where there's a difference between manual and CNC machines since we only had a very small CNC router/engraver at school...