Was just browsing the webs and found this:
How does next wave cnc have a 3hp water cooled spindle kit that plugs into a 110v outlet and only requires a 15 amp circuit???
Pwncnc website states this thing should require way more amps than that.
Wonder if this could be adapted to Onefinity. From what I could tell it’s an 80mm spindle.
I can’t say for certain (not an electrician) but I’ve seen several dust collectors that say they’re “2HP” that run on 220v but come wired for 110v. The Vevor brand comes to mind where reviews say that it comes wired for 110v and the switch is set to 110v but it runs “like crap” on 110v.
I would suspect that the spindle in question is either the same (runs like crap on 110v), it uses like 40amps at 110v, or they’ve vastly overstated its horsepower rating like the famous Harbor Freight 2HP dust collector
Again, I’m probably wrong. I don’t futz with electricity because for me, bad things happen, but that’s what my first impression might be…
{ EDIT: Oh, looking at the product page, I see that it has a “110V 13 amp inverter”… Maybe that takes in 110v/13amp and converts it somehow to 220v for the spindle? No idea, but if it’s a working idea, why don’t most spindles offer the same? }
Either way, if I were in the market for a Water-cooled spindle for the Onefinity (I can’t afford such luxury), I’d probably just go with the tried and true PwnCNC model…
Not an electrician. Looking at voltage, amps, kWh, and HP, a single phase 110V 3HP spindle takes a 34A load, which would require a 40A breaker minimum as an 80% load max is what you’d want to put on a circuit. 50A is better because it’d give additional overhead as vfds and motors have at least a 10% over the top of variance for waste. Thats a huge circuit. Running a motor on a single phase is also not as clean for driving a motor, so it’s a dirtier power. Even if the vfd brings it to 220 3 phase for the spindle, there’s still a huge waste of service for the conversion, and it’ll still run like crap compared to 220/240.
Next step up is single phase 220/240. That requires half the amps of 110 mathematically because it’s got 2 hot legs instead of 1. It’s also far cleaner. You’re still not running AS clean as say 3 phase power, but I’ll assume most of us are in a single phase shop or garage. Powering up on 220 also uses half the gauge wire as 110, which is far easier, and half the amps. So what took 34A before to drive into a vfd for a single phase, only takes 17 for a single phase 220 spindle.
What I went with is a single phase 2.2 KW/h 220v VFD to 3 phase 2.2kw(3 HP) spindle. The max draw on this spindle is 9.6 amps, with max vfd draw at 17. Best to go with a 25A 220v breaker with 10/3 wire minimum(depending on length of run). Why 25a? It’s to give the proper overhead to the vfd to push the spindle hard enough and to build in room if a larger spindle is In your future. You could put in an 50a 220v circuit, with a car plug and charge a car when you’re not carving. Again, I’m not an electrician, take this for what it’s worth. Talk to an electrician and be safe. If you go with a 3hp 110v, a 110/120v 15A circuit can’t push that safely.
220v isn’t an option for me. When u do move up to a spindle I’m probably going with the pwncnc 110v package.
This just caught my eye and made me wonder about it. I’m not really willing to go through all the trouble of adapting this to my machine.
1 HP = 746 Watts
746 HP*3 = 2238 Watts but that’s output power. If the efficiency is say 80%, then the input power would be
2238 W/0.80 = 2797 Watts
2797 Watts/110V = 25 Amps…
Hypercube may not be an electrician but his assessment seems pretty good - sounds like the voice of experience to me…
I believe all the numbers. I wasn’t doubting the power draw of a 2.2kw spindle. I was wondering how this is being offered with the numbers they claim. Doesn’t make sense to me.
I see what you mean now. Yes something seems to be missing and I don’t see any further details. They mention a “110V 13 amp inverter” but not really anything more. I know this, you can’t get more power out of a system than you put in so, at best, you’re looking at 1430 watts (110V*13 A)…
I haven’t personally experienced the need for more power than my little router can give me yet but obviously I’m not a hard core CNC guy yet from reading these posts. The only time my router seems underpowered is when it’s just crashed into a workpiece because I didn’t zero my Z axis at the correct reference point! For me, a more powerful spindle seems like a recipe for much harder crashes and more destruction! The thought of destroying a $1,000 spindle is kindof scary.
I’m looking for some more rigidity. I’m thinking of the 1.5kw water cooled 80 mm pwn spindle kit
Hey Jared,
Both 220/240 V and 110/120 V are single-phase electricity. The fact that in the U.S. you usually find split-phase electricity with two hots does not change anything on the fact that such a supply, when connected between the two hot legs, are single-phase electricity. The VFD that you connect to the two hot legs is one for single-phase electricity.
The fact that a device on 240 V single-phase draws half the current than on a 120 V voltage source, the same power (in Watts) assumed, has its cause simply in the formula P = U * I.
And it is true that half the current requires half the wire cross-section area diameter and half the fuse rating, but this does not apply to American Wire Gauge (AWG) because half a AWG wire gauge does not mean half the wire cross-section area. Using half the wire strength on half the current is true for wire gauges given in wire cross-section area, i.e. IEC 60228. The reason that a double cross-section area fits double the current comes from the fact that it has exactly half the resistance. This linear relationship does not apply to AWG.
See also: Comparison chart of AWG (blue), SWG (red) and IEC 60228 (black) wire sizes (hover mouse over a field to see dimension)
For computing the power draw of a spindle/VFD see here.
As a VFD is a AC-to-DC-to-three-phase AC inverter, so the AC on its input is converted to DC anyway, and it does not matter if you feed it with single phase or three-phase power. It will not affect “cleanness” of the electricity. What will strongly affect the cleanness of the output current are AC and DC reactors and RF filter chokes that are available for VFDs. Also I would recommend to always use a input line filter matching the input current and voltage of the VFD (usually available as accessory, see VFD manual, Section 5 “Inverter System Accessories”)
The difference between single-phase VFD input und three-phase VFD input is that the formula for three-phase power is P=U·I·√3 so you have the current coming over three wires, and each provides an AC current whose phase is shifted by 120° towards the next. This means if you have three-phase supply in your home (like it is usual in Europe), you can use a much weaker wire gauge/wire cross-section area to supply your VFD than it would require on a single-phase (or U.S. 240 V split-phase current which is also single-phase), but you need two more wires then.
Most of what I was referring to was breaker/wire size to vfd. The sizing from vfd to spindle is smaller due to 3 phase, which is great. But the most important part is getting the right vfd/breaker/wire size(awg). The standard is no less than 80% of maximum draw of the vfd. So if the vfd is 2.2kw 220, then a 20a single phase 220(dual pole) breaker is sufficient to meet that need. Without getting into the maths. I’d love to have 3 phase into the vfd, at 120° per pole, for cleaner motor driving with less attenuation, but some people are stuck on 220, and some are stuck on 110. I was stating that 110v 3hp is not doable on a 15a 110v circuit, and that 20a 220v would be needed to meet that 3hp requirement.
Hey Jared,
I was only talking of the input of the VFD, the supply circuit for the VFD.
The output (connection to the spindle) of a VFD is always a three-phase current, as induction motors only work with this. The three-phase current is taken from the capacitor that stores the DC and is switched by six IGBTs to form three quasi-sine waves of AC on three output wires. Also according to IEC 60034-1 the power rating on spindles does not mean the electrical power they draw, but the mechanical power they are able to deliver at their shaft (see here for details).
A 200-240 V VFD for 2.2 kW spindle may draw more than 4 kVA. Here you see the nameplate of two typical 2.2 kW VFDs:
Image 1: Michael’s Hitachi WJ200 VFD nameplate.
Image 2: Aiph5u’s Omron MX2 VFD nameplate.
As you can see, on single-phase input, they are rated with 24 A current draw, and in their manual, a 30 A fuse is recommended. The wire size I use to supply this VFD is a 2+PE wire in the strength 4 mm².
At 110 V (which these VFD manufacturers do not offer), the same power would require double the current, double the fuse rating and double the wire cross section area (i.e. 48 A supply circuit, 60 A fuse, and 8 mm² wire cross-section area). Cheap chinese manufacturers are the only ones that offer 110 V VFDs for 2.2 kW (3 hp) spindles, and since there exist no domestic supply circuit in the U.S. to drive such a VFD at 110 V, they simply omit the VFD input current rating both in the manual and on the nameplate of the VFD.
(This has nothing to do with the output of the VFD and the spindle input.)
Hey Wayne,
As I just wrote in the post above, cheap chinese VFDs omit the input current rating of the VFDs. If they say “110 V 13 A” this probably means the current on the output (to the spindle) that you can also find on the spindle nameplate. In this case, this means current per phase as spindles are three-phase motors that draw current over three wires simultaneously. See here for details.
Regarding voltage, as long as you don’t buy a VFD with integrated step-up converter like the Huanyang “B-T” Models or the Invertek Optidrive ODE-3-210058-104# which allows to set the output voltage to 0×–2× of input voltage (and which usually are much more expensive), the VFD output voltage is identical to its input voltage.
Have you never seen a 120v 3hp router before? It’s called fudging the numbers. Really what they are doing is calculating HP based on RPM and torque, not voltage and current. I believe what they do is bring the motor to a stall to get the maximum torque valve and use the maximum RPM it can go at. In the real world it’s one or the other, not both.
Hey Alex, hey all,
Also there is a big difference whether it is a number that designates a router or a spindle. A router is a power tool, which often is rated by simply multiplying the current it draws with the voltage to obtain a power in Watts and to sell it with this rating. A spindle, on the other hand, is not a tool, but a motor, which is made to be the component of a machine, and motors have to comply to IEC 60034-1, which says, the mandatory power rating on the nameplate has to tell the mechanical power available at the shaft, not the electrical power draw. Otherwise engineers would not be able to compare motors, because motors have different efficiency. Of course the electric power a motor draws is much higher as the mechanical power it can deliver, but for choosing a motor for an application, it’s the mechanical power at the shaft that you want to know. The electric power it draws is then important for dimensionating the supply circuit.
Usually on routers and other power tools, their manufacturers don’t tell you the mechanical power the motor can deliver, you just have the electrical power draw. Sufficient to size your circuit and wires, but says nothing about the motor’s efficiency.
See also an example here.
Let’s apply Occam’s Razor here: I posit it’s more likely Next Wave made a mistake in their website copy.
And the part number engraved on the spindle in the picture corresponds to a 110V 1.5KW rated spindle.
-Mark
Weird. That would be a really big blunder…cough….fraud. They expressly say er20 collet also not er11 like in your link. Maybe they just got the picture wrong? I don’t know. I mean the whole thing is confusing. I would bet on it being marketing that it’s 3hp and it really isn’t.
Either way I’m not trusting it.
A claim of fraud requires proof of intent to defraud. Retailers are generally not liable for honest errors in advertisements.
Besides with a 13A “inverter”, you were never going to get more than 1.5HP of work out of the spindle anyways.
All this said, there’s really no need to continue conjecturing: the seller provides contact information in their ad. Hopefully the phone number is correct!
-Mark
This package is being sold from multiple vendors online with the same claim. Rockler, Grizzly etc all have it listed with the same specs. If it was just their website I’d say ok maybe a mistake. If there are multiple places with a spindle/vfd misrepresented - to me at least - it’s more than just an honest mistake. Doesn’t prove intent true but if it doesn’t deliver what is advertised yet it’s marketed widely it’s either fraud or in the very least negligence in my book. Companies do have an obligation to ensure their claims are valid in their advertising. False advertising is a problem.
Hell, maybe it does what they say. I don’t know.
Just smells fishy to me.
The same way they got the rating for my 10 horsepower shop vac (that draws about 800 watts). They use disingenuous measurements, and by that I mean they intentionally misrepresent and lie.
