Got the spindle drive and motor fitted and wired today, dont have all the I/O for it hooked up yet but was able to run the spindle from the netbook to see what it sounded like. The motor is only a 3800rpm motor and I would like to make some form of increaser to get the spindle to 6000rpm as per original but that will have to wait. I started the spindle at 100rpm and it was silent so went to 1000 and again fine so cranked it up to the 3800rpm and it was still relatively quiet. I let it run for a good hour at 3800rpm and the spindle housing only got slightly warm so looks like things are fine there
I changed tools whilst the spindle was running at 100rpm and 200rpm and that went well, the spindle is meant to be turning so that the spring loaded dog drops into the holder and 200rpm seemed slightly better than the 100 so may have that as my tool change rpm.
Some of the bearings on the holders are knackered and a few noisy, they are non standard bearings and likely wont be cheap but Mark had already replaced one with a thinner (standard) bearing and just made up a spacer out of nylon to take up the 2mm or so difference, I will do the same but will likely use bronze as I have some left over from a job that is about the correct OD
The cabinet now has all of the components in it so its just all got to be wired up now, that will take a while I suppose but should hopefully let the paint harden a bit. I got a bit more painted today but I think I will concentrate on the inside next so that it gets the longest time to cure before I am ready to run the machine.
Hood