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Done some looking around here and haven’t been able to really come to a clear conclusion on which way to go.
My main concern is noise level. I understand the 48v Spindle provides a much quieter solution, which is what I’d like but am I giving up anything by going with the spindle vs the DeWalt?
What are the advantages of either? I do remember reading about some using the spindle like the slower speeds which are more ideal when cutting aluminum. I may be cutting some aluminum stock at some point, so this is also something I’m interested in, but again, what do I lose not having the DeWalt.
Thanks in advance for any help, sorry if this was discussed somewhere else in the forum. Thought I went pretty far down the rabbit hole but you never know.
My makita is barely louder than my previous 48v spindle and as mentioned, the sound of cutting material is generally going to be louder than the router motor itself (unless you crank up the speed as they can get horrendously loud when run at the top end of speed)
I, for one, strongly suggest a router over the spindle.
Are you talking about the Quiet Spindle (48V) from Inventables or a different, more specific CNC spindle?
If its the Quiet one the Dewalt will give you two things you’d want:
1 - More power, if needed
2 - RPM governor, the RPM will be maintained and it wont bog down.
If you can score the Makita for about the same price as for the Dewalt, go Makita as its minimum RPM is 10k vs the Dewalt 16k. This affect cut noise - but feed&speeds of the cut will also have an audible effect.
Apparently the brushes of the Makita seem to last longer than Dewalts.
Another router that doesn’t get the mention it deserves is the Hitachi M12VC@ 2/14 horse power. it also has a low rpm and is only slightly louder than the makita at 11,000 rpm. and its available for around $125.00’s with a fixed base.
In my posting it shoud have said 2 1/4 horse power. The mount I got from Zen Bot was around thiry five dollars and came with a back plate that I didn’t use
I ran a 800w water cooled spindle on my other machine right next to the XC. I actually bought it to cut the aluminum parts I needed to upgrade the XC. And in my experience the dewalt is a jet engine (even set at 1) compared to the spindle. The only thing I could hear was the bit on the material. That being said. A water cooled spindle with VFD has its own set of requirements. = water pump, bucket for water, water lines, EMI from the VFD etc… An air cooled spindle would be much simpler but the noise becomes more comparable to the Dewalt.
Thanks Curtis! not sure I’m ready to get that much into it at this point. An enclosure is where I’ll start along with some creative scheduling of my cuts will have to do for now.
For me the primary advantage of the DeWalt was redundancy. If the DeWalt fails you can have a new one for $125 as fast as you van drive to the big box store. If your spindle fails you’re going to be down for quite a bit longer.
