Spindle Upgrade

I installed a new 80mm spindle this weekend and I will say that it works amazingly well.

I wanted to upgrade to something that could take a 1/2" bit as I use the CNC for flatten boards. I ran it today with some walnut and it worked beautifully. I was a little surprised and easy the upgrade was.

I did have a few issues, some of the bolts on the Z-axis were over torque and I snapped a bit trying to get them off. I was unable to get the broken bit out, so I was delayed waiting for a new Z-Axis.

The second issue I had was soldering the wire to the connector. My soldering skills are not great and I ended up having a friend come-over and do it. He did a great job and it came out perfectly.

The third issue was the settings on the VFD, from the factory the max RPM was set to a value about half the max settings. After updating, everything worked correctly.

I went with a 2.2kw air cooled as I did not want to add the hassle of water. I am happy with the sound and the cutting performance.

The only thing left is to find a better way of turning the VFD on and off, currenlty I have to unplug from the wall. I think I will look at a really or SSR and build a small box to control power.

If it is helpful to anyone else, here is a list of everything I purchased for the upgrade, and where I got it from.

Spindle

VFD

Cable
https://www.automationdirect.com/adc/shopping/catalog/cables/bulk_multi-conductor_cable/flexible_control_cable/mctc-14-4s-1

Spindle Wrench - 21mm & 13mm

Collet Set

Spoilboard Bit

Dust Collection

Martin

6 Likes

Hey Martin,

this was discussed here the other day:

Did you manage to solder the 14 AWG cable to the connector you showed here? Or did you get a connector with larger cable output?

Did you already connect your VFD to the Onefinity CNC Controller over the Modbus/RS-485 interface?

A friend of as able to do the soldering on the connector.

I have not connected it to the controller, that is the next thing on the list.

I have a few SSR and some smaller magnetic switches, I think I will build a box for this and probably the dust collector. And when I see ā€œIā€ I really mean my friend who helped with the soldering. He is an EE and way smarter.

Thanks for all the assistance.

Martin

Hey Martin,

good if you have help from your friend!