In the past year, I have burnt up 4 trim routers. 2 makitas, 1 Openbuilds Rout ER11, and one Carbide ER11. I generally only work with hardwoods and the deepest depth of cut I run is .125 with a max feed of 120 (1/4in downcut.)
I placed an order for the Redline 80mm 1.5kw Dec 15th and was hoping to have a rough estimate on how long I can expect it to last and if it will last longer than 3 months. I am generally carving 4ish days a week for 9+ hours each day.
Not sure about Redline but I have had and ran several cheap Chinese spindles a lot and have not had a failure.
Pat
I run a 1.5kw Hung Yang water cooled in a production environment
Profile cutting Oak boards using either 1/8 or 1/4 spiral end mills.
I would guess its got around 2000 hours use and it still gives me no issues.
I am fairly hard on it with speeds and feeds
I do warm it up and warm it down and regularly replace cutters.
This is what works for me I expect other will be along and cast doubt on the numbers
I’ve had my HK 2.2kw water cooled spindle for several years now without an issue. I do nothing to warm it up. I turn on the VFD after I load the G code and then the water pump. Once I see water flow I press play. I’m sure I have close to 1000 hours on it. I can’t comment about the air cooled spindles but with water cooling and no brushes the spindle barely gets warm to the touch. A trim router was designed for occasional use. A 3 phase induction motor can run for years without issue.
i’ve used several hy spindles and had them run over 2000 hours before i replaced. ( upgraded, they are still in shop as backups now). never had spindle quit on me yet. have over 3600 hours of cut time.
I have been warming my spindle up with a 20 minute warmup cycle. I followed the guidelines from PwnCNC. The spindle is water cooled. I unplug the pond pump during warm up.
I’ve noticed that after the warmup the spindle is warm to the touch.
I’ll then start a program, with coolant flowing. Quickly the spindle cools off and is barely warm at all.
Makes me wonder if the warm up cycle is serving any purpose at all?
I’m considering adding a thermostat system to hold the spindle at a specific temperature. Reading Dr-AI write that he doesn’t do a warmup at all makes me contemplate just skipping it entirely.
I also went through a few iterations of the warm up cycle - The latest version traverses to the parking position before spinning up, and displays how many minutes are left in the program before it finishes. I’m using a Masso controller.
Yes. The bearings will expand a bit and any embedded lubricants will warm up as well. That makes the subsequent actions of the spindle more predictable and improved spindle life vs firing it up and digging right into a chunk of hard maple.
Is it critical and would you notice if you didn’t do it? Probably not unless you do a lot of work and then you might experience premature spindle failure. But then you wouldn’t know how much longer it could have lasted.
I agree about the bearing expansion and lubricant viscosity. In my case, I feel the spindle get warm, then coolant flows and it cools to room temperature again. So what is the point of the warmup up cycle?
Whether I warm up the spindle or not the program still cuts the part will “cold” bearings.
I would suggest that the outer case cools down when the coolant turns on but the bearings will stay warm - since they are generating heat. The coolant will just keep them from over heating.