Review on Collet Cooled Spindle Variable Frequency by Toki Louton

I finally installed this box on my old (really old) ShopBot as a replacement for a regular router. Both the spindle and the VFD were well packaged with an instruction manual provided. And that's why I'm only giving it 4 stars - the brochure is very basic and assumes the new owner knows how to operate the VFD and how to wire it up. I had to trawl through several online forums and resources to figure out how to wire everything properly. This is important - the instructions say not to ground the device! Oh no. And the placement of the wires from the spindle to the VFD needs to be correct if you want the spindle to rotate (clockwise/counterclockwise). I made notes all the way, maybe it's useful for someone. And by far the biggest challenge is the basic setup of the VFD to ensure that the VFD is frequency and voltage matched to the spindle. There are 175 or more individual settings on a VFD - the booklet says 5. For a fan cooled spindle you need to set a minimum RPM and maximum spindle RPM within the parameters of the VFD. There are others - increase/decrease etc. - that can be changed, but there are very few places on the network where this is described. A full list of operating parameters for each of these package combinations must be available or the customer risks burning the spindle and/or VFD. - touch the speedometer on the way), but I was able to make some test cuts on the cherry. So far I'm impressed. As long as you have the spindle firmly in place (and no brackets are supplied - you'll have to do it yourself) it seems to have almost no runout and won't bind on heavy cuts (which was the main reason I bought the spindle ). System). I'll do more experiments in the coming days once I've checked the spindle speed, but I'm optimistic. This is a quiet system - I think the VFD fan makes more noise than the spindle! There seems to be power. Let's see how well it strains and how long it lasts. Okay, just a few months of ownership and less than 100 hours on the spindle and the bearings are starting to squeak. I was hopeful at first. not so much now. I'll run it until the bearings burn out and I'll take it apart to see if it's good. My typical job lasts about 20 hours and I use filters to keep airborne dust to a minimum, but bearing failures at this early stage are unacceptable. I think that's what I get for a cheap spindle. On the plus side, with the non-contact tachometer, the spindle RPM, which should be 18,000 rpm at full throttle, peaks at around 17600. So I call that a win. Check for more updates.