110V to 220V VFD

You know... you can make stamps for him also. Case harden them when you are done. They will last pretty long.

Yeah, I could make stamps. More money in engraving though. And the parts would look better because my customer can only hand stamp the parts. He doesn't have the proper press for stamping his stuff. Eric

Fair enough. I just know engraving can be a pain too. Had a friend bring me a lettuce knife to be engraved once. I detroyed three knives before I got it right. I had to clamp it down really hard, map the surface with a touch probe, and then project the engraving to the surface. When I machine the surface its easy, but when I take it to an existing surface its a bit of a pain.

I'm already engraving stuff. Wrapping engraving to a surface can be tough. I've done that, so I know what you went through. Since my top spindle speed is 7500 engraving for me is slow. Not only that, when cutting metal if the surface speed is too slow the tool pressure really climbs. So I ordered me a 2.2KW ER20 2400 RPM liquid cooled spindle with matching VFD this morning. A water pump too. Tomorrow I'll order me some .0001 max runout ER collets from Precise Bits. Since I have the spindle dimensions I can now start making the mount. The spindle housing on the Fadal mill hangs down about 3 inches from the head. This means that if I mount the new spindle up tight to the machine's spindle housing there will be about 5 1/2 inches of un-supported length of the new spindle hanging out in the wind. In order to clamp the new spindle closer to even with the existing spindle nose in the Z axis I will need to space the new spindle about

2 inches farther away from the Fadal spindle housing in order to clear the head that holds the spindle housing. Which is probably best. On my mill there is a program for warming up the spindle when it has been idle for a while. Do your spindles require some sort of warming up routine? I'm really jazzed about this new spindle and how much faster I will be able to engrave. I also often use small diameter carbide endmills and am always running them way below what they should be running, SFPM wise. So maybe I can do some metal milling with the new spindle too. Eric

Think of this for a change in thought process. You can rough with a 1/4 end mill. LOL. Seriously I remove a lot of material with a 42deg 3FL .250 end mill. Its not like hogging with a giant index mill, but its pretty impressive for its size. I have a few molds I make where I have to remove

0.25 inches of material to rough shape the mold and leave a hinge boss. 110IPM, 20% stepover, 0.24 DOC roughing pass. Strictly in climb though so, lots of rapids. The sound of the cut is pretty cool. (conventional makes it scream.) Its not a high power cut, but it does the job.

If you do any 3D detail work a high speed spindle is like the difference between night and next week compared to an old school 3.6-5K spindle.

I always run mine for a few minutes at their lower speed settings (8K) before starting a job. I don't know if there is a proper warm up procedure, but I figure a couple minutes with no load can't hurt at modest RPMs to warm up the bearing grease can't hurt. After that they will be running all day long with the only breaks being for tool changes and part changes. If I have jobs setup right and blanks cut and ready then part changes don't take much longer than tool changes.

I engrave as well. Just finished engraving Bronze. My diamond rotary bit was a bit deep and it did the work on the bronze. I am going to do lighter next time, had to move the blank upward in a different fixture and forgot to move the cutter. Tired mistake.

Eye lope showed nice numbers but they were a bit wide.

Getting the depth right on something you can't see can be tough.

Mart>> >>

Martin, perhaps you could mount one of these near the bit:

endoscope

Not a tinyurl - but I bought this one - for my phone type.

Thank you for the idea. cleaver to work on phones This one Android & PC.

Mart> >

Nice find! I just ordered one - it will live in my toolbox, replacing the HF one that always has dead batteries and takes up much more space.