[tgdavies]

I've now cut a few pieces on my 6040 (body and steppers from Carving-CNC; G540 (48V), Ethernet SmoothStepper, cables from Homann, 800W ER11 water cooled spindle and VFD from linearmotionbearings via ebay) -- only an hour's cutting time so far, so too early to say whether there will be glitches, but I'm very pleased so far.

I do have some questions which I hope people with more experience can answer:

1. What spanner should I be using to hold the spindle while I tighten the collet nut? It seems like a silly question, but 13mm is too small and 14mm is too large, a shifter works but is a pain.

2. I have my eStop interrupting the mains supply to both my G540 power supply and my spindle. I realise this isn't the most common way to do it, but setting up spindle control via the G540 is still on my todo list. What are the pros and cons of my setup vs. just using eStop to signal Mach3 via the G540?

3. I'm still setting up my water cooling. Is it usual to run the water cooling tubes through the cable trays with the other wiring?

Thanks for any tips.

Tom

[aarggh]

My 6040 isn't from Carvingcnc but it's pretty much identical. The spanners that came with mine while not a tight fit do more or less fit reasonably well, but I can't remember what size they were. But if the 13mm is too small how can the 14mm be too large? It can only have around 0.5mm slop or so?

I've always understood for safety it's better to have the E-Stop control the power, not use it to signal software and then have the software cut power.

So far as water cooling goes, just run it through the trays with the cabling (that's how all the Chinese machines are done), so long as the hose is half decent it will be perfectly fine. But whatever you do, don't use water, get car radiator coolant and don't dilute it, just use it as is. If it's designed to work in cars and radiators of differing metal composition, it's good enough for a spindle. Also, water goes off and get's algae blooms.

I have my 1.5kw spindle using just 5 litres of coolant pumped from a plastic container under the machine, that's sealed off from dust and contaminates, and is also shielded from the lighting so no UV or light effects. I checked it just the other day, and after 2 years it's still as new.

cheers, Ian

[tgdavies]

Hi Ian,

My 6040 isn't from Carvingcnc but it's pretty much identical. The spanners that came with mine while not a tight fit do more or less fit reasonably well, but I can't remember what size they were. But if the 13mm is too small how can the 14mm be too large? It can only have around 0.5mm slop or so?

That's exactly what I would have thought, but it really does happen (and they are good quality spanners too!). I asked the spindle vendor, and he said "The Spaner 13.6mm is suitable." -- some crazy imperial 17/32nds?

Thanks for the cooling advice -- I got that set up with a 12V submersible pump tonight, so I will be confident to do some longer runs now!

Thanks,
Tom