Best Spindle Brand

[Swashc2]

Does anyone have any suggestions as far as the best brand of spindle to use? We currently have the 4 HP HSD, but I was rather disappointed to hear the bearings are not serviceable and all that can be done is to run them until they go out. From reading posts, it sounds as if the Colombo spindle is serviceable with regard to the bearings.

Can anyone provide suggestions as to the best spindle or spindle brand to go with? Its a long story, but we will be replacing our machine and if there is a different brand people have been happier with, now is the time to make that change for us.

Thanks

[Brady Watson]

This has been discussed many times. You can rebuild a Colombo, but it will cost nearly as much to replace the entire spindle. These lower end spindles are throw aways, but if I had to choose one brand over the other from a durability stand point, it would be Colombo by a factor of about 3:1.

-B

[steve_g]

Do we have any sense of the life expectancy of the EBay type Chinese spindles? They cost only slightly more than a PC router and several guys who made the switch expressed initial satisfaction. I'd like to hear from several of them after the fact...
SG

[Joseph clements]

The big ones are serviceable 5hp and up .
What machine are you looking for ?

[larry_k]

I am looking at the atc spindle. how much is it to
replace a atc spindle. Is it a thowaway spindle?
larry

[danhamm]

Some things I've learned about Chinese products, I have 2 Chinese spindles, both are good. A friend I suggested to buy one did and it was a dud lasted less than one hour. What we learned from that is, they want the Dud returned for warranty and the cost was more than the spindle.

China subsidizes manufacturing shipping if you order a object from china and its to come DHL or whatever and the cost they want you to pay is 150.00 US dollars, to return that via DHL from North America is 4 times that cost
even on a DHL corporate account.

[bob_dodd]

I have 3 of these spindles , I purchased them 1 at a time on Ebay from a US Seller in Ca. (these sellers seem to ship out of the same warehouse or use different names ) The first and second spindle arrived in perfect new condition , the third one arrived and it was used wires had solder on them , dirty and had another Ebayers paper work in the box as he returned it before me , I took lots of pictures and emailed them through Ebay , cost me $50. to ship it Ca. a new shiny one arrived in about 2 weeks

I've had mine now about 5 months now , no complaints , with that said , most of the work I get is 3D or cutting .040 Al Profiles so there not pushed hard but lots of hours


If that makes you nervous you can try a guy in Pa ugra.com he sell them also ,he does charge more, ( He also has video on his site on how to disassemble the spindle ) I purchased my cooling systems / heat exchanger from him , had trouble with a pump , he replaced it right away .

[Brady Watson]

I am looking at the atc spindle. how much is it to
replace a atc spindle. Is it a thowaway spindle?
larry

The HSD toolchanger spindle is in a completely different class than the other ones. It has much larger compressed air cooled bearings.

Cost is all relative. If you need an ATC for production, replacement is dirt. If you just want one...it's a lot.

-B

[rhfurniture]

If you are doing deep heavy cuts in hardwood etc, then I think that in order to minimize vibration, the heavier the structural build the better, and this is in part based on the size of the collet holder, which is after all, the weak link in the assembly. Though I use ER25 (16mm max collet) spindles, I was advised by my tooling supplier that they had problems with anything less than ER32 (20mm max collet) on heavy work.
All the Chinese spindles I have seen on ebay (up to 4Kw) have had ER20 (12.7mm max collet) which makes me suspicious, though I understand that the smaller Colombo's use this size without issues. If anyone knows anything different, please let me know.
I have always had excellent results and reliability from Fimec spindles.

Allbest, Ralph.