Water cooled / air cooled 2.2kw spindle

[mitchejc]

I complete agree with Eddy, go water cooled. I've got both, a high quality air cooled spindle on a commercial router I got +- 5 years back and a chinese water cooled spindle for the machine I'm building at the moment, so I don't have any practical experience on the water cooled one yet but I've run it several times for testing and its whisper quite in comparison. To me noise is the biggest issue with air cooled, above 16-18k rpm cutting nothing mine sounds like a fighter jet taking off, really the kind of noise that one gets allergic to over time. I think the warm up sequence is similar for both and not a big issue. Run it for a few minutes in the morning increasing rpms gradually and that's it. A little like a car in the morning, if its cold don't start it an blast away at full rpms but not an exact science either so none of the let it idle for 43.5 seconds and then slowly put it in drive and don't exceed 2643rpms for the first 4.432 minutes BS.. :-)

The only pro I can think of for air cooled is that on mine the air exits at the bottom so depending on the kind of cut sometimes I don't switch on the compressed air nozzle to clear chips as the wind from the spindle is enough to clear it. I think the extra effort to add a tank and water pump is a small price to pay for a quieter work environment + other benefits as Eddy outlined.