Hi Kip,

Thanks for the kind words, I just need to crack on with the rest of it now!

The cut out in the housing is to allow the Lovejoy coupling to be connected and also to allow the top collar, that retains the spindle in the housing, to be secured. These both have screws that are inserted from the side to lock them in place, with those for the spindle collar being threaded into the spindle itself.

You can buy some brushless motors from UK model shops, but they are much more expensive than direct from Hobby City in China. My experience with using some of these motors is that the really cheap ones are under-rated and not very efficient, but the mid-range ones are surprisingly good, often not much less efficient or less well made than the really expensive ones.

The key is knowing what to buy. The motors are rated in terms of maximum power (in watts) and also Kv, which is the rpm per volt. This latter figure is important, as it allows the use of a motor that will run at the right sort of speed for the application. In general, it seems that using a high Kv motor and then gearing it down with a reduction belt drive is probably a better way to go, as it reduces the low speed torque requirement from the motor. One of the regular contributors on the Ev forum I frequent has converted his Taig Mill to run on an RC brushless motor (his name is Matt Schumaker and he has a web site here: http://www.recumbents.com/WISIL/shumaker/default.htm with some details of his mill conversion, towards the bottom of the page). Matt gave me some advice on motors and controllers recently, quote:

"Jeremy,

I am running a small outrunner on my CNC too. I have over 100 hours on it so far without any issues. I am running a Castle Creations Phoenix35 ESC on it from a 24 volt, 20 amp power supply.

The issue I think you are having is more a matter of the controller than the motor. Also, I am running a belt drive rather than direct drive. For aluminum cutting, I run it 3 to 1 reduction. For carbon fiber cutting I am running 1 to 1.3 overdrive. This gives me 13,000 RPM at the spindle. My Taig spindle uses huge bearings (maybe 1 and 1/2 inch OD). Yet, my ESC runs fine even driving those huge bearings at such a high speed.

You may be having problems partly because of the low motor RPM as well.

A Castle Creations 35 or 45 amp ESC is relatively innexpensive. I would go that route.

Matt"

A look around the Hobby City site will soon give you an idea as to what's available. The controller that didn't work well for me was one of their very cheap 40A SuperSimple series ( see here: http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/s...Simple_40A_ESC ). Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that it didn't work well, as it cost less than $12.....

The controller I have that works well is a complete over kill, as it's rated at 120 amps continuous, 130 amps peak. It's also less than ideal as it is a relatively high voltage unit (30 volts max) and so doesn't have a built in 5 volt regulator to drive the servo tester needed as a speed control. I will probably go for a higher rated SuperSimple controller for the spindle, I think. The 70 amp version looks as if it might well be better, but again it has no BEC (battery eliminator circuit) so would need a separate 5 volt regulator. This won't be a problem if I put the speed controller in the main box, though, as I already have a 5 volt supply available there.

If you want to do some price comparisons, then probably one of the cheaper UK model shop sites is this one: http://www.budget-rc.co.uk .

Jeremy