Wanting to purchase a new spindle questions (solved with answers from Onefinity)

Spindle/VFD (Aftermarket)
1

I know this topic has been beaten to death here, but I haven’t really found specific answers to some of the questions I have. I have had a Makita router for about two years and it’s on its last leg. I would like to upgrade to a spindle as I have heard it is worlds better than a router. So here a few questions I have, as I am totally new to the spindle game. I would like a 65mm spindle air cooled as I don’t have the 80mm upgrade attachment:

  1. Do I need to purchase a spindle AND a VFD?
  2. Reputable manufacturers for spindles?
  3. Overall cost I’m looking at?
  4. I don’t want to have to do any fancy wiring or electrician stuff to my garage outlets. What size spindle will allow me to not have to change anything?
  5. Is the onefinity controller plug and play with a spindle or am I going to have to do some wiring?

Thanks!

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  1. Yes, most are sold as kits together.
  2. there’s China (cheap), us (more expensive than the machine). The two most users get are from pwncnc (china) or solifide design Redirecting... (usa) are plug and play.
    Amazon sells pieces that you can program and wire for much cheaper (huanyang brand is generally the best china has to offer), but not everyone is an electrician, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCZWYkiVAXs
  3. plug and play kits $800+, build your own from pieces on amazon: $400+
  4. You have the 65mm mount, so a 65mm spindle
  5. see #2, but you’ll have to do some wiring.

The most important thing to note is adding a spindle will remove any technical support from Onefinity officiially. We do not support spindles. If you have an issue with a spindle/vfd installed on a Onefinity, you will be 100% relient on the community or your spindle manufacturer.
Before contacting official Onefinity tech support (support@onefinitycnc.com) for assistance, you will need to completely remove the spindle, vfd, and all related wiring and return to the supported Makita router configuration, for us to begin troubleshooting machine issues.

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Great, thank you for the reply!

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Being someone who just recently upgraded to the spindle I will say you will love it! Bits last longer due to the better control and it is extremely quiet. I went the Chinese route from Amazon, huangyang kit with 65mm 1.5kw. I went water cooled tho. The vid they give in the kit only goes to 7 amp and the spindle is rated for 8 so I’m not sure you get full power but I haven’t any issues with performance. The cables they give are garbage and don’t cheap on the cable, get a shielded 16x4 cable and solder to the connector they give. It saves you about 100bucks to make your own but if you want to buy premade I would do corvette guy on ebay, he has good ones. I just control my rpm’s manually at the vfd not through gcode so that’s the only wire I have coming off the vfd. The power cord you will also supply yourself, buy a decent 12/14ga electrical cord and cut an end off for vfd power. What I would do if going air cooled, buy the spindle 110v 1.5kw and get some extra collets for us bit sizes (1/4 and 1/8th) right off the bat. get a vfd rated for the 2.2kw 110v spindles (you set amps when you program it) buy good shielded cable, if you’ve got the extra $ I would buy premade and save the time as I don’t solder very often and buy longer than you think you need, I’d go 12-15’. That would put you all in for 3-400, significantly cheaper than pwn. Enjoy the upgrade!

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I bought a 2.2Kw spindle and VFD before my X50 even arrived, but decided to endure the learning curve using a Makita. 1 1/2 years later, still happy with the Makita, so my new Elite is going to use the spindle I’ve been storing. The X50 is going to mount on the wall now, and while I do want the collet, power, and noise reduction, I’m not wanting to add that heavy a spindle to the equation. The 1.5Kw sounds like a good choice to me, as it weighs a little more than half what the 80mm beast weighs. Sticking with air cooled for fewer working parts, and ordering the wiring from Corvette Guy, again.
StepperOnline has great pricing, so I think I’ll buy from them this time. My only indecision is the 110 or 220 volt versions. Is there an advantage to going 220v?

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Hey Justin, hey Van Jones @WhitePineWorkshop,

I would strongly avoid a 110 V spindle, for the reasons mentioned here and here.

Also if you use a 65 mm spindle on the Original Series with their Z-16 assembly, you got to know that the spindle does not clear the stepper and brings the “spindle back bumps the stepper cage problem” with its chatter problems.

Regarding the 1.5 kW or 2.2 kW spindle choice, I would always choose the 2.2 kW model because you can always use less power and usually it’s not a big price difference. The 80 mm models are available with ER-20 collets which means tools shanks up to 13 mm. A ER-20 spindle has a larger axle diameter than a ER-16 and is somewhat stiffier, since larger bearings are installed. Larger bearings means longer life and less heat. A larger shaft diameter means more stiffness and more resistance against vibrations (chatter).

If you considered 65 mm spindles, yes there were problems with hairline cracks on water-cooled models and on the Onefinity Standard Series, they don’t clear the stepper cage and bump it with their back if not slid much downwards inside the clamp, which augments the danger of chatter, while with the optional 80 mm spindle mount, all spindles clear the stepper. On Elite Series, both 65 mm and 80 mm spindles are said to clear the stepper cage.

These questions are thoroughly answered in this forum. We have a search function here.

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Hey all, hey Van Jones @WhitePineWorkshop,

this is simply not true. The ubiquitous Huanyang HY series don’t even offer Sensorless Vector Control.

There are excellent VFDs coming from China, but I would avoid any no-name, am*zon, eb*y, Alib*ba or Huanyang VFDs as this is the usual crap.

Use the search function in this forum to find a VFD.

If you buy a VFD, I would buy it at a serious electronics supplier or better at a CNC parts supplier, or from the manufacturer itself. Every VFD manufacturer has a global site with information on local dealers.

Also practically all reputable spindle manufacturers offer a matching VFD (e.g. here, here, here). In those cases you usually pay more for the VFD, but the VFD is already programmed to match the spindle.

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Hey Van Jones,

you could simply buy it here. Installing it goes this way.

With the original 65 mm mount, the spindle will not clear the stepper so you have limitations on spindle length and/or spindle position in the mount. With the optional 80 mm spindle mount , the spindle clears the stepper so you don’t have this limitation.

Note that if you insist on using a 65 mm air-cooled spindle (e.g. like this one), there is a solution to lift the stepper cage so that the spindle fits then and eliminates the “bumps the stepper” problem.

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What if I don’t have 220V in my shop? That’s the main reason I went with the 65mm spindle.

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Hey Van Jones,

I see you are located in Idaho which is in the USA, where in residential areas you usually get your 120 V domestic electricity from split-phase electricity (two 120 V phases shifted by 180°) which means even if you seem to have only 120 V outlets (which is between one hot and neutral), you usually have 240 V in your home (between two hots of different phases) so an electrician can easily install a circuit with a 240 V outlet and circuit breaker.

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11

Another option if you must use a 65 mm spindle due to available power is to use the 80 mm mount (to clear the stepper) in conjunction with a 65 mm reducer sleeve.

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Hey all,

if someone insists in using 120 V voltage for spindles, of course you can do that if you stay within the capability of the domestic 120 V power supply circuits in USA. This is usually 20 or 30 A max. Therefore, a 2.2 kW spindle is prohibitive at 120 V, and this is also the reason why unserious chinese VFD sellers simply omit the input current rating on their nameplates and in their VFD manuals, because they want you to buy them despite of this.

The excellent Omron MX2 VFDs, that I can recommend, are nearly identical to Hitachi WJ200 VFDs, but the latter offer two models in the girly power class, for 0.4 kW and 0.75 kW spindles.

Note that 750 W on a spindle has nothing to do with 750 W on your trim router and cannot be compared at all. The router means this as electrical input AC power, which because of the poor efficiency of universal motors with carbon-brush motors say not much about the mechanical power, while spindles (induction motors) are required to be specified according to IEC 60034-1, which means the rating for the motor power in kW is not the electrical consumption power, but the mechanical power available at the shaft. Of course the electrical power is much higher, as calculated here for you. That means, a VFD that is rated “for 2.2 kW spindle”, with this, it means the mechanical power at the end of the shaft, and is in real able to draw over 4,5 kVA from your supply circuit, which means, you need a circuit able to supply 20 A if you have 230 V, and 40 A if you have 120 V (for a spindle rated as 2.2 kW).

It is less for a 1.5 kW or 0.75 kW spindle. 0.75 kW on a spindle is a lot, and the power is not delivered like on the hand trim router, but rather like shown here, so the change to a 0.75 kW spindle will bring you all the constant torque over a wide speed range, high efficiency, low noise and long life, that the router is unable to provide.

But one would ask, why take 120 V, when you have split-phase electricity in the U.S. which offers 240 V for air conditioners, table saws, etc., and then you have half the fuse and half the wire gauge on your spindle/VFD, as with 120 V.

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Because the default residential circuit is 15A 120V. 240V circuits are “special” and typically only run for a dryer and electric ranges. Most people will need to hire an electrician to add a 240V circuit for anything else. It would not be uncommon to spend $500 or more for a circuit run to a garage shop. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hey Jim, hey all,

Okay, but if someone seriously wants to have a woodworking workshop, this should be reconsidered. In french we say you need to break eggs to get omelet :slight_smile:

You are right. I think my thinking, of course, is that of a person who – besides many other things at the same time – not only already has stuffed the knowledge of electrical engineering into my head, but who has already re-electrified two of my own historic houses myself and less often have given money to an electrician (especially not after I lent my car battery charger to a person who supposedly worked as an electrician for 18 years and fixed the broken case of my battery charger to make me happy and afterwards the red and black wires were reversed).

I fact there are more, other crafts where usually think I better make the things myself. That’s why I am constantly learning and studying new things. I am a kind of person who in the night thinks, hey, I think there should be a door here, the same way I think, hey, I need a few additional sockets here, and puts them there within the next day.

So please sorry to all!

PS: Note that if someone thinks to have the knowledge to wire a spindle, a VFD and a control cabinet themself together, laying an additional 240 V socket is not really a different thing. It’s something for a certified electrician (and better not for someone who just can make a youtube video saying how to add a spindle to your CNC).

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1.5Kw Spindle owner due to lack of 220V and absolutely love it. It has all the benefits of a 2.2Kw spindle except for the power. PWNcnc has the spindle motors available separately and they work fine with the HY VFDs (be sure it’s rated up to 1.5Kw).

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Hey Eric, hey Van Jones, hey all,

I would also take the ready-to-use spindle cable from @PwnCNC.

@PwnCNC has a much better VFD than the Huanyang HY Series crap, the DELIXI Hangzhou Inverter Co., Ltd. CDI-EM61. Unlike the Huanyang, the DELIXI CDI-EM61 VFD has Sensorless Vector Control!

PwnCNC also offers them as Spindle/VFD Kit, with a ready-to-use enclosure.

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Blockquote pwncnc (china)

I would like to point out that yes our motor and vfd is made in china, but the enclosure is designed, made, and the entire spindle system supported right here in the United States. No customers will be redirected to anyone else for support or warranty needs.
We don’t tell you what you should buy, instead we offer what folks have asked for. If you feel our motor selection is not what your looking for, we do have access to G-Penny’s full range of motor options including motors with ceramic bearings and much more. Our relationship with them is very good and they’re even designing a brand new ATC motor design for us to meet our customers desired features.

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There are some CNCZone members I have read over the years that speak highly of G-Penny spindles (don’t remember if in general or specific models), noting some are very torque-dense by design and can supply good torque at very low RPMs.

I look forward to learning more about the new ATC design.

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We’re internally reviewing the ATC documentation now and hoping to release that by next week along with pricing and upgrade path details.
It’s been a very fun project and I’m certain folks will love to hear more and add these new features to their machines.

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