I've made a start on the spindle today. Spent a couple of hours turning a bit of 1.5" 6082-T6 bar into swarf...............

All told it's turned out OK. I turned a bit of bar up to fit as an end cap to hold the 550 watt motor (yes, I know it doesn't look like a 550 watt motor, but it's very efficient at around 85 to 90%). I turned up a small adapter to fit into the M10 threaded hole in the end of the collet chuck to fit to the lovejoy coupling. I am reasonably happy with the way it turned out, the runout at the coupling is around 3 thou, well within the 15 thou coupling limit.

The big bar has been bored out to take a pair of bearings, one at the end and another just below the cutout (the cutout is to allow the coupling to be assembled).

I just need to make a spacer to fit to the nose bearing and space the chuck out about 10mm from the bearing (to allow spanner access) and make up a clamp ring to fit at the top of the collet chuck 20mm shaft and allow the bearing pre-load to be set.

The thing with the wires poking out is the 40 amp speed controller. It's a bit of an overkill, as my power supply is only rated to 30 amps, but it should do the job. The current plan is to fit it into a small die cast alloy box next to the spindle and build a servo tester to drive it. This will give me a manual speed control, which I may seek to change to auto at a later date.

Hopefully I should end up with something much more robust and accurate than a Dremel, with a fair bit more power. The motor may need a fan fitted to the top for extra cooling, I'll see how it goes.



Jeremy