Official Luthiers Forum!

Does anyone have any experience with the chinese spindles? I currently have a porter cable 890 router and the bearings are going out so i'm thinking about upgrading. If so, should i go air or water cooled and what size would you recommend?

I have a water-cooled spindle. Works terrific.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Air cooled spindles that use a shaft mounted fan are pretty dang loud. The electric fan cooled ones are much quieter and the water cooled quieter still. HP will depend on your machine's rigidity. I have a pretty rigid machine and 2kW does me pretty well. If I went with the Cheap Chinese types, I'd go with a 2.2kW and most likely go with a U.S. supplier that provides a warranty.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Bearings are cheap. buy them a VXB.com for about $15.00 per 10. Take a 1-1/4" socket and air impact. Spin the collet off. Remove the brushes then Remove the top and replace the bearings. Then spin the collet back on by hand don't tighten. put a router bit in the collet and tighten the nut. Turn the router on and lower it in to a hardwood. That will tighten the collet to the shaft.

That's how they do it at the repair center. takes about 15mins.
MK

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I'm outside looking in, just farther from the window than most.

I've got the "Cheap Chinese type" and it works great!

For me, it's essentially a throw-away spindle, just like a router would be, but a lot more accurate. And a lot quieter. Those US Suppliers of these charge 2X the cost or more, so it's worth the risk of he cheap version. Actually, there were three of us NEL guys who bought them at the same time and we worked a really good price so it was pretty tough to beat.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don,

In addition to our large cnc we have a small Shopbot buddy that we dedicated to doing odd ball fret boards that still has the Porter Cable router, we have considered updating it to a spindle.... ( most of the time we use our Grizzly fret board sander for doing common radius-es it's so much faster.... 3 to 4 minutes a board )

Any brand name or contact information for the cheap spindle?

Blessings,

Kevin

indeed - plenty of folks have been really satisfied with their CCS but there are also lots that got burned. I took a quick look and it looks like the price difference is closer to about $60: around $259 for the cheapest ones on e-bay while Kelling has them for $319. just sayin'.....

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Search for 2.2kw spindle on e-bay and you'll get a long list. CNCzone.com has a thread that lists some e-bay suppliers that folks have been happy with and some that sold them bad spindles. http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy_cnc_r ... ences.html search for "chinese spindle" or "cheap chinese spindle" and you'll find many more threads.

Here's the link to Kelling: http://www.automationtechnologiesinc.co ... ng-spindle - I've heard of a few bad experiences with them but for the most part they're very responsive to problems from what I've heard.

Here's another U.S. supplier that supposedly tests the spindles to separate out the runts but they're considerably more expensive: http://ugracnc.com/WATER-COOLED-CNC-SPI ... ducts.html Note, I have no experience with these guys.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

We got ours for closer to the $200 each...including the shipping.
Will try to get details.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hey Don, any word on the spindles you guys bought?
Thanks!