Spindle warm up question

[Max Girouard]

We just upgraded to the spindle. Wow, what a difference in noise levels! At full speed, it sounds like my wife's hair dryer on low compared to the router which sounds like a 747 on full throttle! Anyway, my question is, how long do you wait between jobs where you think you would need to run the warm up routine? I do a lot of prototyping and will run the machine for 20 minutes, then spend an hour changing things in the program then going back to the machine. Should I run the warm up routine every time?

[Brady Watson]

The key thing with spindles and temperature is the bearing grease. You want to run it at a low speed (<100Hz if you can) to get the grease moving. In the Summer - it's not a huge deal. You can warm it up in about 5 min. In the Winter, in an unheated shop, I rotate it by hand first, then run it at very low speed (say 60Hz) to get things moving, then graduate the RPM after a few minutes. You just don't want it to be ice cold or you can skid the bearings or gall the balls because heat hasn't expanded everything out to near zero end play/clearance.

I don't re-warm the spindle after I have done the initial warm up. If the shop is warm enough for you to be comfortable while working (50F+), then go ahead and run it without worry...providing you warmed it up first thing in the day.

-B

[Max Girouard]

Thanks for the info Brady. Anything else I should be aware of regarding differences in maintenance? Instruction manual was in Italian.

[scottp55]

Max,
You got this?
Not sure which spindle you got but congrats anyways:)

[Brady Watson]

Just watch shock loads (like running the tool into dense materials like aluminum aggressively) and make sure you use center cutting bits when drilling. Both of these are hard on spindle bearings...and these spindles are not rebuildable as per HSD.

-B

[Cosmos275]

Here's a section from an HSD manual you might find helpful25649

[Max Girouard]

Hey Scott, I did get that sheet and have it hanging up next to the bot. Thanks again for the additional info Brady. I don't machine metals and I baby the machine when cutting hard maple.

[Max Girouard]

Here's a section from an HSD manual you might find helpful25649

Thanks for the sheet. This leads me to the next question. Is there any data out there that states how long it takes a warmed up spindle to cool down to ambient temperature given different variables? Where would one take the temperature from on the spindle in the first place? So far on the few runs I've done with my spindle, the outer case has not heated up at all, so there is no way to tell if it has cooled down either. I know I'm probably over complicating this, but that's how I roll!

[Cosmos275]

Is there any data out there that states how long it takes a warmed up spindle to cool down to ambient temperature given different variables?

Don't you love vague CYOA written techical stuff? Not that I know of. I'm sure it depends on a bunch of factors.

I hadn't understood this either until I read it recently. What I've doing now is run the full warm up at the start of a day, and I have a 1/2 warm up routine that I run if there are long breaks between running it. Seems like there are plently of guys running these without issue being less anal about the grease temperature.