New at this

[KenW]

Hi Everyone,
I just joined this forum as I await the delivery of my Asteroid. My previous cnc just died with a communication error and a burned out driver. I built it from scratch about 25 years ago and had worked well until recent.
Hoping to use this forum often with many questions that I may have.

Regards,
Ken

[pete]

Welcome to the forum

[KenW]

Thanks for the welcome. Am super anxious to get my machine and start making stuff for my biz.

[beltramidave]

Welcome. The Asteroid is a great machine and the people at Probotix and on this forum are very knowledgeable. Don't be afraid to ask questions.

What kind of things have you made in the past?

Dave

[KenW]

Hi Dave,
I'm a design/engineer and in the toy biz for some 35 years. A lot of things I've done on cnc have been wood and plastic prototype parts for my work. On the hobby side, made aircraft cockpit panels for people making their own flight simulators.
Ken

[beltramidave]

Sounds interesting. Look forward to seeing some pics of some of your work.

Did you get a spindle with the Asteroid? IMO, it's the only way to go.

[KenW]

What is your reasoning behind the spindle? I didn't choose a spindle because I don't have access to 220volts currently unless I run a new line to my shop.

[beltramidave]

Spindle is a LOT quieter and has a lot more power. With the vfd, the spindle will maintain the power and speed as the load increases, most routers will not do that. You can also slow the spindle rpm's down to around 8000 rpm for specific operations. Doing work with plastics, this could be advantageous.

There is a a lot of debate on water cooled versus air cooled spindles.. I use a air cooled spindle and have never had any heating issues yet when running long carvings. Some say water cooled is even quieter, because you don't have a cooling fan. If you use water cooled, you will need to have a circulating pump, hoses and reservoir and some even install radiators.

If you are running the spindle always at 24k rpm (top speed), then you probably won't notice much difference in noise, but it you run it slower (most likely where it should be), there is a lot of difference.

I think I have seen a vfd for the 2.2kw spindle that will run on 120VAC, instead of 220VAC.

Dave

[KenW]

Ok, I think I understand about the power. The noise level may not matter much as my dust collector makes a lot of noise by itself.
As I've already ordered the Asteroid with Bosch mount, maybe I will do some research about adding a spindle down the road a bit.

[KenW]

Hey Dave,
Found this attached