I pulled the fan, mounted it on a model airplane propeller balancer, added drops of CA glue to the inside surface (with accelerator) and got it balanced up perfectly
For those contemplating to buy one of these 3018 machines for pcb milling, consider this before you purchase. The vibrations from the spindle is really a big problem for attaining reproducible acceptable results. The approach outlined in this video would then be a great help. Although the weak frame and play on the rails on one hand are of equal if not greater hurdle. The frame can’t even handle vibrations from 12v motors with 3mm shafts as is! Thus upgrades for the rails and z gantry are compulsory.
What do you think about the "3020 plus" machines (not from "Vevor" as they have just a slightly upscaled 3018 design with the flaws you mentioned)? They have linear rails for the X axis, the gantry is connected in the back by two 40x20 extrusions held in place by 8 bolts instead of two 20x20's with 4 bolts that you can see on the 3018 machines and the z-axis carrier is made out of an aluminium frame instead of injection molded ABS plastic. They also ship with a "500w" motor (more like 300w actual power) so I think this combination seems a lot more rigid. That with balancing the motor/fan properly and should be able to achieve acceptable results?
@@bami2 have you bought the 3020 plus already? how was it? that looks to be better than the 3018 pro max. but i guess the bigger motor will lessen the advantage of the better designed z and y axis. had to upgrade my 3018 z gantry to 100mm x 200mm to steady the bundled 200W motor and its fan for an acceptable and reproducible pcb's.
@@mariomanus3176 Yes, I indeed ended up getting the 3020 plus. I'm having a ton of fun with it and it seems like it fixes a lot of the rigidity issues there are with the 3018s, I use it currently to mill plastics like HDPE and sometimes polycarbonate into frames for small combat robots and wooden doodads for fun. It has the same issue as the video here with the unbalanced fan and spindle vibrations, but once you balance it (just remove the fan, stick a 8mm steel axle through it, place it on two very horizontal flat rails and keep drilling into the fan on the lowest point until it doesn't want to go to a particular spot), it now works perfectly. I mostly got it for the additional Z height and I believe the thing is both more stable in the X axis from the steel linear rails and the gantry is mounted with 16 M5 bolts directly into the extrusions instead of 12 with T nuts for the 3018s which should also help with Z rigidity. It can cut shallow passes in aluminium right out of the box which requires more setup and tuning with the 3018s. I've seen some people mount a steel linear rail to the top of the gantry with a hook that reaches over the gantry to the rail guide from the Z carriage and seems to help stability a lot.
Nice, I tried 3D printing, but my printer didn't do a good job. The original fan is very inefficient because it's designed to work in both directions, but 99.9% of use cases are CW anyway. Cheers, Jake
Printing a new fan was the first thing I did. Not only the wobble was terrible but it's also "designed" to "work" in both directions, so the blades are parallel to the main axis of the motor. With a new fan the spindle stayed cool enought for a printed part even after 8 hours of use at full speed.
Good to hear the printed fan wheel is an option and that it doesn't melt. I might try it if the fan I installed gets destroyed by dust. The design of the original wheel is a bit inefficient, I wouldn't be too concerned about not being able to run the spindle backwards, although it's not a problem when using a fan. Did you glue it on with epoxy or just a press fit? Cheers, Jake
@@ondrasmalek yeah, I don't think my Ender 3 pro will do very well, it's only got an acme screw on one side of the z axis so I believe it sags a bit on the opposite side, not a problem with most prints, but I don't think the z axis is perpendicular to the x-y plane.
it's not just those spindles, it's all of them , my 200 watt 24 volt spindle has vibrations due to that cooling fan too, i just removed it and put a pc fan over it to cool it. it'indeed a wheel, not any kind of fan , lol.
Yeah, it's a terrible design, I imagine they designed the fan wheel this way so it will produce airflow no matter what direction the spindle is running. But it's very strange they haven't corrected their manufacturing process to make it run straight. Cheers, Jake
let your spindle run halfway , with a 80 grit sand paper or file lay it flat on the side and top of fan it will remove the offset material just like a lathe it will make it all rounded
That might give a slight improvement, but keep in mind this is a fan wheel, not a solid piece, so when you make it thinner on one side it will still be out of balance. Cheers, Jake
@@TheStuffMade it does´nt need to take much material just enough where is wobbling i did it to mine and all vib, are gone, running smooth on all speeds, just to let you know
@@joaoamaro4311 Sounds like you were lucky and the wobble wasn't so bad on yours. Mine got about 1mm wobble so it would take away almost half the thickness of the wheel if I used your method. Cheers, Jake
@@TheStuffMade and you could glue on some weight on the opposite side if it was really unbalanced. But the thing is, one side was further from the center than the other, by removing weight would be offset by the distance you've removed. The further out from the center, the same weight would cause a bigger wobble. So by removing the material, you might find it comes into balance.
I've printed a new fan for my 500W motor, but i can't quite figure out why all og my prints are tilting at an angle. So untill i fix my 3d printer, i just used a 8mm tolerence shaft, pressed it into the fan and let it roll on 2 very flat surfaces, that way i can balance out the fan, just like balancing a wheel. It removed ALOT of the vibrations, the fan still turns untrue by a couple of mm, but it is balanced.
Yeah, the main goal is to get rid of the vibrations, doesn't really matter how as long as the spindle is still getting cooled. It's nice that you managed to balance the fan wheel, it's really a shame they didn't have better quality control at the factory. I have the same problem with my Ender-3 printer, the reason is that it's only got a lead screw on one side for the Z axis, so it always sags a bit on the opposite side. Cheers, Jake
@@TheStuffMade The original fan looks cast molded, so that could be the cause of it being unbalanced. I also got an Ender-3, but the tilting prints only started when i switched board to a silent board. I might have to make it a double Z axis
@@rasmus1600 I doubt the fan mold is faulty, but they probably remove the fans too early from the molds while they're still soft. I've been considering the 2nd Z axis leadscrew kit, it's only $35 on Banggood, I guess worth a try. Already installed the BL-Touch kit, it works great.
@@TheStuffMade I just bought a dual z axis upgrade kit earlier today. The BL-Touch is a nice thing to have, saves a lot of time bed leveling, i'd recommend putting some harder springs/silicone bushings under the bed instead of the original springs. That should help keeping the bed level so the BL-Touch doesn't have to move the Z axis that much when printing
I like the idea of a off spindle mounted cooling fan as opposed to one mounted on the spindle motor...but I don't have a 3D printer to print a bracket...is there a bent metal idea or product available?
The fan solution works well, I was worried if dust would get trapped in the fan, but it's not been a problem. I did replace the 3D printed bracket from the video with a couple of pieces of aluminum because the printed part would start bending from the pressure of the fan and the rise in temperature. I used a couple of 12mm x 3 mm strips of aluminum for the new bracket, bent them into shape in a vice and drilled some holes for mounting on the spindle plus drilled and tapped some screw holes for the fan. This works great. Cheers, Jake
Nice! Pretty satisfying resoults 🤔 Could spindle motor still isolated somehow to fight against even those smallest fibrations? At least if would use it only for PCB milling etc
As I said in the last video: or you could just balance the fan that came with the spindle. If you can't take it to a machine shop you can do it yourself. I've had to "turn" various metal pieces without access to a lathe or a milling machine. What I did was chuck it up in my drill press then clamp a file to the drill press table then tap it into the piece that was rotating until it just kissed it. That would show me where the wobble was. Then spin it like that, tap in a little more, spin it like that, then tap in a little more and it came out fine. Now the runout on my drill press probably wasn't the best, but it was fine for my purpose. Even if you just held the file in your hand you'd remove the wobble.
I didn't fancy attaching a fan, so I did like Muskoka Mike mentioned with a file to reduce the imbalance on the top sides and bottom of the spindle fan. Being careful not to remove too much material. I worked great and it's rock solid now even maxed out. Before the vibrations got quote aggressive from 7k rpm. THANKS
On my GRBL control board there is an output for a laser, I used that for both the fan and a relay to switch the spindle on and off from software. Cheers, Jake
Hello, I have a similar engine. I was scraping wood while cutting the edges, the engine had a hard time and suddenly stopped. It's not working now. Electricity comes to the plus and minus poles of the motor, but the motor does not move. What do you think is causing the problem?
Did you check the output voltage from the power supply? If you get 110V on the output then the motor is fault. If you don't get any voltage on the output, then check the fuse inside the power supply. Cheers, Jake
@@TheStuffMade Thank you for your reply. Yes, I checked. My motor runs on 48v and there is a 48v electrical output at the output of the power supply. In addition, 48v electricity comes from the plus-minus pole of the motor to the input cable.
Tldr; spindle is OK for engraving. Next to worthless for cnc applications. Mine really struggles cutting cedar with a depth of .15 and a 1/8" bit and 20mm/min.. obviously worse with a 1/4" bit. Way better options out there for the same price. Only thing these cheapo Chinese spindles are good at is low noise, if you can get feed rate to a 🐌 pace.
Hi Joe, I assume you mean 20 inches/min, not 20mm/min. Otherwise I believe your spindle is faulty. I was doing some rubber wood the other day, it's harder than cedar with a 1/4" bit and 5 mm depth at 300mm/min, no problems in my case. I guess there will be a difference in torque because I run 230V and I assume you are on 120V, due to the way the power supply works by sending the full rectified voltage to the spindle in pulses, in my case that would be 320Vdc and only 165V with 120Vac input. But yeah, if you only do wood and you don't care about noise or runout, then you'd be better off with a decent trim router. Cheers, Jake
@@TheStuffMade I'm fairly new to the cnc world, forgive me if I'm wrong on the feed, I'm running it on a maslow cnc, its slow as a snail, doesn't seem like 20inch/min, I cut feed rate in half 3 times from stock settings attempting to get the 500w spindle to stop chattering. Wish I could run the 230v as I'm sure that is a nice boost in torque and would probably be acceptable to me then, I've ran many routers with 1/4"+ bits at 1/4"-1/2" depth by hand through hard maple while feeding twice as fast as this poor little maslow ever dreamed of, and never had the issues this little spindle is giving me.. Still a useful spindle, just not up to my expectations. I suppose it's a faulty unit though, time is money or I'd exchange the spindle and try again. Makita 1.25 hp trim router in the mail. Wish I could find a reasonably priced air cooled 1000-1500 watt spindle.... Edit: my 500w spindle doesn't have much vibration at full rpm, 40-80% it gets a ugly sounding vibration though.
yeah this spindle sucks, i have it too. but it got way better when i used a single flute end mill, i had a two flute and 3 flute for the longest time , slow as a snail, didnt think single flute would make much diferrence but i got proven wrong. single flute does make a difference.
@@TheStuffMade It is a 100 volt DC motor,,,the power supply will only give 0 to 100 volts output regardless of mains voltage. you can buy digital voltage/current meters that also readout watts for really cheap...that could be used to monitor power usage of the spindle motor.
@@Centar1964 That's not how this power supply works, take at look in my review video where I draw a schematic of the power supply and explain how it regulates the output. ua-cam.com/video/lqOe9Z4gyFM/v-deo.html Cheers, Jake
Follow up video having a look at dealing with the strong vibrations in this spindle.
Review: ua-cam.com/video/lqOe9Z4gyFM/v-deo.html
I pulled the fan, mounted it on a model airplane propeller balancer, added drops of CA glue to the inside surface (with accelerator) and got it balanced up perfectly
For those contemplating to buy one of these 3018 machines for pcb milling, consider this before you purchase. The vibrations from the spindle is really a big problem for attaining reproducible acceptable results. The approach outlined in this video would then be a great help. Although the weak frame and play on the rails on one hand are of equal if not greater hurdle. The frame can’t even handle vibrations from 12v motors with 3mm shafts as is! Thus upgrades for the rails and z gantry are compulsory.
What do you think about the "3020 plus" machines (not from "Vevor" as they have just a slightly upscaled 3018 design with the flaws you mentioned)?
They have linear rails for the X axis, the gantry is connected in the back by two 40x20 extrusions held in place by 8 bolts instead of two 20x20's with 4 bolts that you can see on the 3018 machines and the z-axis carrier is made out of an aluminium frame instead of injection molded ABS plastic. They also ship with a "500w" motor (more like 300w actual power) so I think this combination seems a lot more rigid.
That with balancing the motor/fan properly and should be able to achieve acceptable results?
@@bami2 have you bought the 3020 plus already? how was it? that looks to be better than the 3018 pro max. but i guess the bigger motor will lessen the advantage of the better designed z and y axis. had to upgrade my 3018 z gantry to 100mm x 200mm to steady the bundled 200W motor and its fan for an acceptable and reproducible pcb's.
@@mariomanus3176 Yes, I indeed ended up getting the 3020 plus. I'm having a ton of fun with it and it seems like it fixes a lot of the rigidity issues there are with the 3018s, I use it currently to mill plastics like HDPE and sometimes polycarbonate into frames for small combat robots and wooden doodads for fun.
It has the same issue as the video here with the unbalanced fan and spindle vibrations, but once you balance it (just remove the fan, stick a 8mm steel axle through it, place it on two very horizontal flat rails and keep drilling into the fan on the lowest point until it doesn't want to go to a particular spot), it now works perfectly.
I mostly got it for the additional Z height and I believe the thing is both more stable in the X axis from the steel linear rails and the gantry is mounted with 16 M5 bolts directly into the extrusions instead of 12 with T nuts for the 3018s which should also help with Z rigidity.
It can cut shallow passes in aluminium right out of the box which requires more setup and tuning with the 3018s.
I've seen some people mount a steel linear rail to the top of the gantry with a hook that reaches over the gantry to the rail guide from the Z carriage and seems to help stability a lot.
The reviews and suggestions were as good as it gets given we are dealing with hobby machines.
Nice simple and effective fix. I like it! Thank you.
I 3D printed a new fan and it is great, I cut oak for 12 hours with no issues. The improved 3D printed fan has 80% higher air flow so cooling is great
Nice, I tried 3D printing, but my printer didn't do a good job. The original fan is very inefficient because it's designed to work in both directions, but 99.9% of use cases are CW anyway.
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade Another thing I did was cut groves into the aluminum mount to increase surface area as it acts like a heat sink
Nice work, encouraging. Thanks :)
Thank you! Super helpful to me.
Printing a new fan was the first thing I did. Not only the wobble was terrible but it's also "designed" to "work" in both directions, so the blades are parallel to the main axis of the motor. With a new fan the spindle stayed cool enought for a printed part even after 8 hours of use at full speed.
Good to hear the printed fan wheel is an option and that it doesn't melt. I might try it if the fan I installed gets destroyed by dust. The design of the original wheel is a bit inefficient, I wouldn't be too concerned about not being able to run the spindle backwards, although it's not a problem when using a fan. Did you glue it on with epoxy or just a press fit?
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade Just a press fit. Your printer only need perfectly perpendicular axes otherwise the fan might vibrate as much as the old one.
@@ondrasmalek yeah, I don't think my Ender 3 pro will do very well, it's only got an acme screw on one side of the z axis so I believe it sags a bit on the opposite side, not a problem with most prints, but I don't think the z axis is perpendicular to the x-y plane.
What a great fix, 👏👏👏
Very good and fair review/ Would you gain any more thermal performance by adding either a second fan or with some special ducting a larger fan?
Thanks for the update :)
Cheers,
it's not just those spindles, it's all of them , my 200 watt 24 volt spindle has vibrations due to that cooling fan too, i just removed it and put a pc fan over it to cool it.
it'indeed a wheel, not any kind of fan , lol.
Yeah, it's a terrible design, I imagine they designed the fan wheel this way so it will produce airflow no matter what direction the spindle is running. But it's very strange they haven't corrected their manufacturing process to make it run straight.
Cheers,
Jake
hi what about making a chamber around the spindle and making water cooling system
You could do that, but it would probably be easier just to wrap some thin copper pipe around the motor if you want to cool it with water.
thanks a lot
let your spindle run halfway , with a 80 grit sand paper or file lay it flat on the side and top of fan it will remove the offset material just like a lathe it will make it all rounded
That might give a slight improvement, but keep in mind this is a fan wheel, not a solid piece, so when you make it thinner on one side it will still be out of balance.
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade it does´nt need to take much material just enough where is wobbling i did it to mine and all vib, are gone, running smooth on all speeds, just to let you know
@@joaoamaro4311 Sounds like you were lucky and the wobble wasn't so bad on yours. Mine got about 1mm wobble so it would take away almost half the thickness of the wheel if I used your method.
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade and you could glue on some weight on the opposite side if it was really unbalanced. But the thing is, one side was further from the center than the other, by removing weight would be offset by the distance you've removed. The further out from the center, the same weight would cause a bigger wobble. So by removing the material, you might find it comes into balance.
I've printed a new fan for my 500W motor, but i can't quite figure out why all og my prints are tilting at an angle. So untill i fix my 3d printer, i just used a 8mm tolerence shaft, pressed it into the fan and let it roll on 2 very flat surfaces, that way i can balance out the fan, just like balancing a wheel. It removed ALOT of the vibrations, the fan still turns untrue by a couple of mm, but it is balanced.
Yeah, the main goal is to get rid of the vibrations, doesn't really matter how as long as the spindle is still getting cooled. It's nice that you managed to balance the fan wheel, it's really a shame they didn't have better quality control at the factory.
I have the same problem with my Ender-3 printer, the reason is that it's only got a lead screw on one side for the Z axis, so it always sags a bit on the opposite side.
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade The original fan looks cast molded, so that could be the cause of it being unbalanced. I also got an Ender-3, but the tilting prints only started when i switched board to a silent board. I might have to make it a double Z axis
@@rasmus1600 I doubt the fan mold is faulty, but they probably remove the fans too early from the molds while they're still soft. I've been considering the 2nd Z axis leadscrew kit, it's only $35 on Banggood, I guess worth a try. Already installed the BL-Touch kit, it works great.
@@TheStuffMade I just bought a dual z axis upgrade kit earlier today. The BL-Touch is a nice thing to have, saves a lot of time bed leveling, i'd recommend putting some harder springs/silicone bushings under the bed instead of the original springs. That should help keeping the bed level so the BL-Touch doesn't have to move the Z axis that much when printing
@@rasmus1600 Great, let me know if the z axis upgrade kit is worth the effort.
I like the idea of a off spindle mounted cooling fan as opposed to one mounted on the spindle motor...but I don't have a 3D printer to print a bracket...is there a bent metal idea or product available?
The fan solution works well, I was worried if dust would get trapped in the fan, but it's not been a problem. I did replace the 3D printed bracket from the video with a couple of pieces of aluminum because the printed part would start bending from the pressure of the fan and the rise in temperature. I used a couple of 12mm x 3 mm strips of aluminum for the new bracket, bent them into shape in a vice and drilled some holes for mounting on the spindle plus drilled and tapped some screw holes for the fan. This works great.
Cheers,
Jake
Nice! Pretty satisfying resoults 🤔
Could spindle motor still isolated somehow to fight against even those smallest fibrations? At least if would use it only for PCB milling etc
Would it really make any difference given what these hobby machines were intended for.
no it cant the vibrations are from being out of balance
As I said in the last video: or you could just balance the fan that came with the spindle. If you can't take it to a machine shop you can do it yourself. I've had to "turn" various metal pieces without access to a lathe or a milling machine.
What I did was chuck it up in my drill press then clamp a file to the drill press table then tap it into the piece that was rotating until it just kissed it. That would show me where the wobble was. Then spin it like that, tap in a little more, spin it like that, then tap in a little more and it came out fine. Now the runout on my drill press probably wasn't the best, but it was fine for my purpose.
Even if you just held the file in your hand you'd remove the wobble.
I didn't fancy attaching a fan, so I did like Muskoka Mike mentioned with a file to reduce the imbalance on the top sides and bottom of the spindle fan. Being careful not to remove too much material. I worked great and it's rock solid now even maxed out. Before the vibrations got quote aggressive from 7k rpm. THANKS
you tested it on wood first, so
second on the plate, what material is that plate? thanks
Not sure, but I think you mean the circuit board? That's a double sided FR4 material.
Cheers,
Jake
what kind of tool you used to pull/remove the spindle fan ?
It's called a 3-Jaw Gear Puller, a very handy tool in situations like this.
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade thanks man!
hello is there a stl file for that fan , Where i can find it . thx
Just seach for 500w spindle fan 3d print, there are on thingiverse and other places... PETG should be OK
Cooperation request:
Hi dear sir,could you tell me how to contact you?we want to cooperate with you,look forward to your reply,thank you.
Where did you connect that 12v fan?
On my GRBL control board there is an output for a laser, I used that for both the fan and a relay to switch the spindle on and off from software.
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade Thanks very much. That's what I was suspecting but I thought that I can't be running laser output and spindle at the same time.
Hello, I have a similar engine. I was scraping wood while cutting the edges, the engine had a hard time and suddenly stopped. It's not working now. Electricity comes to the plus and minus poles of the motor, but the motor does not move. What do you think is causing the problem?
Did you check the output voltage from the power supply? If you get 110V on the output then the motor is fault. If you don't get any voltage on the output, then check the fuse inside the power supply.
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade Thank you for your reply. Yes, I checked. My motor runs on 48v and there is a 48v electrical output at the output of the power supply. In addition, 48v electricity comes from the plus-minus pole of the motor to the input cable.
Tldr; spindle is OK for engraving. Next to worthless for cnc applications.
Mine really struggles cutting cedar with a depth of .15 and a 1/8" bit and 20mm/min.. obviously worse with a 1/4" bit.
Way better options out there for the same price.
Only thing these cheapo Chinese spindles are good at is low noise, if you can get feed rate to a 🐌 pace.
Hi Joe, I assume you mean 20 inches/min, not 20mm/min. Otherwise I believe your spindle is faulty. I was doing some rubber wood the other day, it's harder than cedar with a 1/4" bit and 5 mm depth at 300mm/min, no problems in my case. I guess there will be a difference in torque because I run 230V and I assume you are on 120V, due to the way the power supply works by sending the full rectified voltage to the spindle in pulses, in my case that would be 320Vdc and only 165V with 120Vac input. But yeah, if you only do wood and you don't care about noise or runout, then you'd be better off with a decent trim router.
Cheers,
Jake
@@TheStuffMade
I'm fairly new to the cnc world, forgive me if I'm wrong on the feed, I'm running it on a maslow cnc, its slow as a snail, doesn't seem like 20inch/min, I cut feed rate in half 3 times from stock settings attempting to get the 500w spindle to stop chattering.
Wish I could run the 230v as I'm sure that is a nice boost in torque and would probably be acceptable to me then,
I've ran many routers with 1/4"+ bits at 1/4"-1/2" depth by hand through hard maple while feeding twice as fast as this poor little maslow ever dreamed of, and never had the issues this little spindle is giving me..
Still a useful spindle, just not up to my expectations. I suppose it's a faulty unit though, time is money or I'd exchange the spindle and try again.
Makita 1.25 hp trim router in the mail.
Wish I could find a reasonably priced air cooled 1000-1500 watt spindle....
Edit: my 500w spindle doesn't have much vibration at full rpm, 40-80% it gets a ugly sounding vibration though.
yeah this spindle sucks, i have it too. but it got way better when i used a single flute end mill, i had a two flute and 3 flute for the longest time , slow as a snail, didnt think single flute would make much diferrence but i got proven wrong. single flute does make a difference.
@@TheStuffMade It is a 100 volt DC motor,,,the power supply will only give 0 to 100 volts output regardless of mains voltage. you can buy digital voltage/current meters that also readout watts for really cheap...that could be used to monitor power usage of the spindle motor.
@@Centar1964 That's not how this power supply works, take at look in my review video where I draw a schematic of the power supply and explain how it regulates the output.
ua-cam.com/video/lqOe9Z4gyFM/v-deo.html
Cheers,
Jake
"this tool might be a little on the big side" unfortunately, I never had that problem.....least that's what she said hehehehehhe
just put the original fan in the lathe and bore and sleave it