Just how quiet really are the water cooled spindles?

[routercnc]

Hi HankMcSpank

It's hard to describe noise levels in words but I'll try.

I have a water cooled spindle and can report that when it arrived I ran up the motor resting on towel and it was barely audible. Just a faint whine that you would probably not hear in an adjacent room in the house. They use a different motor type, unlike the router with it's noisy universal motor.

When I clamped it to my machine (with aluminium plates, gantry etc.) the noise levels increased noticeably as the vibrations were now being amplified by the cnc machine. It's a bit like those old musical toys which are quiet in your hand but are much louder if you rest them on the table.

That's not to say it was noisy on the machine, probably similar to a cordless drill. You could easily hold a conversation next to the machine.

Now things get different when you actually start cutting. Depending upon the material this is probably where things get the loudest. Still not at router level but you just can't escape the noise created by the bit cutting the material. If you are in the loft with a party wall to your neighbours there's a chance they will hear the cutting noise. Your only defense is to build an acoustic enclosure around the machine. Make the enclosure walls fairly heavy, have good seals especially the doors, and add absorption to the inside.

Hope this helps.

[HankMcSpank]

Thanks, pretty much what I thought, which brings me on to my next though ...acoustic amplification by the CNC frame bed!

BAsically, I'm looking to buy a moving table machine for no other reason than they appear quieter (or ought to be on paper!)...has anyone any real world experience experience and can confirm in a generalize manner?!

My little machine is quiet as can be when jogging about, it's this one...




It's hard to get a sense of scale there....but it's very small (in fact, I'll declare being a bozo, cos my eyes decieved me into thinking they were nema23 motors on the machine when I ordered it ....when it arrived I felt like a giant in legoland's mini cities of the world - the machine is definitely "CNC for 8yr olds" and the steppers on it are relatively asthmatic nema17 @70oz .....big DOH!).

I like the style and erhm 'solidness' of it so I was thinking of upping the ante to a larger sibling, something like this....




ok so being larger, it's likely to resonate/amplify the vibration/spindle noise more ...but I'm hoping that it'll still be tolerable.

The thing is the seller (UK based) says there's very little noise difference between that moving table design above that he sels vs a the moving gantry design he also sells similar to this...




If that's true I'd be gutted at missing the extra bed real estate (I dabble with guitars & could occasionally get a guitar body mounted on the 4030 machine!), but that table looks like an acoustic guitar body placed upside down - a whole load of resonant chamber ...with the strings in play here being the vibrations of the machine!

Confused....decisions, decisions.