Stock Spindle Versus Trim Router

Deleted, no need for this

Do yourself a big favor and go with the Dewalt 611 from the start!

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I agree… I bought the stock spindle but after reading everything, I purchased the Dewalt and never hooked up the stock spindle. It does a great job.

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I am glad I bought the 300W quiet spindle with my kit. Since this is my first CNC machine I am making a lot of mistakes and learning how everything works. Making a mistake with the 300W spindle is plenty bad, doing it with the 1.25 hp router would be way worse.

So I will probably upgrade soon, but still glad I started the way I did.

Nooo, don’t believe that. Dewalt is bad. Since we changed it, no more fun fixing machine, no more broken bit or waste woods. Now we turn to Maytag technicians, sending job and sit down. It’s boring.

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Either way, the first thing you should install is a emergency stop switch. Inventables carries a few if you don’t want to search

Really should have been included in the kit if you ask me, it’s a safety must have (I use it often).

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Go with the Dewalt. My initial thought was “I’ll just get the standard kit, get that working, then think about upgrades”. But the spindle/router is basically stand-alone, so if the new Dewalt mounts had been available when I ordered my kit, I would have been better off starting with the Dewalt.

I’ve had my D611 for several weeks and just ordered my X-carve the 22d of this month! lol…I knew it was inevitable…

Yeah, I ordered the stock spindle, thinking I’d keep my DeWalt as a palm router, since it’s so handy. Was a mistake, should have just bought the mount and another DeWalt. It makes the machine perform a whole world better, not even a comparison.

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Lucky you, you don’t have to go true stock spindle experience.

After reading on the board I decided to go with a router as opposed to the stock spindle.
My reasoning:

  1. Replacing the spindle is one of the first upgrades most people do and has a major impact on machine performance.
  2. Stock spindle issues seemed to be the greatest source of weird, hard to troubleshoot problems.
  3. Loosing automatic control of the spindle was not that big of an issue.

So I decided to skip the whole mess and picked up a Dewalt 611 at my local store.
I have ordered up a solid state relay to allow logic control of the on / off.
Though I plan on keeping speed control manual as I don’t think fine control of RPM will be much of an issue for wood and MDF.
Eventually, when I decide to try milling acrylic or aluminum (things that do require specific RPM’s) I plan on picking up and hand held tachometer and just manual set it.

Good call, you will be very pleased with that DeWalt! It’s a darn good palm router as is, that was really the reason I didn’t do it to start with. I wanted to keep it as a hand-held tool. I will probably actually end up with another one to use in that capacity, it’s that nice.

And yeah, the spindle RPM control is not a big deal for wood materials, and I was flipping the spindle on and off myself anyway at the control box.

Stock Spindle cant do much good in demanding jobs.

I have a Makita RT0700C on the way, should greatly improve the power of my x-carve.

One minor problem I ran into with the router.
It has a 1/4" collet. I uses a cheep ($5) 1/8" collet adaptor and it did not hold the bit properly.
I switched to a different adaptor (rotoszip chuck adaptor) and that worked fine.
So ordering up a proper 1/8" collet for your router is recommended.

Does anyone know, is Inventables refunding money if spindle goes bad or just sending replacement? Refund could go towards a new DeWalt or Makita.

Not sure, but I do know they want the bad spindles back for a quality control analysis.

I just placed my order for the 500mm X-Carve this morning, but after more and more consideration finally decided to email Inventable’s support and change my order to include the 611 mount instead of the stock spindle. There have been too many horror stories about them braking, having unacceptable runoff, etc.

They only can offer you a mount for Dewalt I guess.

Didn’t even ask, myself. Just picked up the mount and chalked it up to a learning experience. They’ll replace a dead spindle for you, no problem, but it seems like the life of the stock spindles is extremely limited anyway. I’d rather not bother.

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I never had experience using DC spindle before because when I got my Shapeoko2 I upgraded immediately to Makita compact router with 1.25 HP. Been cutting a lot of G10 and carbon fiber easily as long as the bit is still sharp.

Then decided to upgrade to X Carve with DC spindle. Big mistake! The steppers are really beefy compare to my shapeoko 2, you can really feel it but the spindle, big nah! It wont even cut G10 clean and it vibrates a lot. I called Inventibles told them I want to return the spindle and swap for the 611 mounting. I’m pretty sure I can make some ring spacers to mount the Makita.

Hope to get it tomorrow.