I am expecting the arrival of a Journeyman within a month or two.
I am heavily leaning towards a water cooled spindle, mostly for noise reduction.
There is a lot to be found on this forum about spindles, but they also are dated back a ways.
Could anyone offer suggestions to current offerings.
I see Huanyang is the go-to brand - but there does seem to be many others.
I am somewhat interested in the 1/2 inch shank option. Is this only available in a 2.2KW model?
Its not a deal breaker.
I have the option of either 110 or 220. If there is no significant advantage to 220, I would go with 110 for the option of using in various locations.
Also, are mid-2022 Journeymans able to handle 80 mm?
Do I need to buy an 80mm adapter? I could not find one for sale on the Onefinity site.
I support that. You’ll also want to go that route to have a better rpm range to work with (for drilling, reaming at rpms that air-cooled spindles are unable to operate at).
The Onefinity-linked setup is in the description for the 80mm Spindle Mount Upgrade and I also 100% endorse that setup.
Things to know:
That particular setup is for 110v / 3-phase operation and will come with the 3-phase VFD.
That particular setup is for ER20 collets, accommodating up to 1/2" shanks.
I’m successfully running this setup on a Woodworker X-35 so you shouldn’t have any issues.
You’ll need to source a power cable and a spindle cable, this kit doesn’t come with these.
There is a Hitachi VFD floating around the forums as an alternative to the Huanyang VFD and it’s being touted as far superior. I can say that the Huanyang VFD’s cooling fan is loud. It’s louder than the spindle operating at about 18k rpms… which isn’t all that loud, honestly, but ironic.
the difference between 110 V to 220 V models is that with same power rating (measured in Watts), both VFD and spindle suck double the current at 110 V than they do at 220 V which means if you choose 110 V, you need wires with the double cross-section area and also double the current allowed for your circuit breaker.
You are interested in a 2.2 kW spindle, which is a reasonable size. The 2.2 kW (CT mode) output power, 200-240 V single-phase input Hitachi VFD Model No. WJ200-022SF (Manual) is practically identical to Omron MX2 VFD Model No. 3G3MX2-AB022-E (Manual). Note that the input power of these models is 3.8 to 4.5 kVA (depending on exact input voltage) which means 19 A current on input side. Circuit breaker is recommended to have 30 A and the wires for the single-phase input to have 5.3 mm² cross-section area (AWG10). If you want thinner wires and lesser current, you can use three-phase input instead of single-phase input, but while here in Europe it is common to have 400 V three-phase electricity in every house, as far as I know this is very rare in the U.S… I don’t know how it is in Canada?
Note that the same wire sizes and circuit breaker amperages are needed for the cheap chinese VFDs and spindles, it is a matter of current and not of provenance. The difference is that Omron and Hitachi VFD manuals tell you about it while cheap chinese manuals don’t.
Hitachi and Omron do not offer VFDs for girly power errm I meant for 110 V, but at 110 V, this would mean double the current and therefore double the wire’s cross-section area, so now you know why they don’t offer them.
Note that in the U.S., many people have split-phase electricity (two 120 V phases shifted by 180°) which means even if they seem to have only 120 V outlets (which is between one hot and neutral) they usually have 240 V in their homes (between two hots of different phases) so an electrician can easily install a circuit with a 240 V outlet and circuit breaker.
errm I meant for 110 V, but at 110 V, this would mean double the current and therefore double the wire’s cross-section area, so now you know why they don’t offer them.