After a lot of changes and modifications, I had my baby running yesterday for real for the first time. The first job would be to cut a better bracket for the router. Wow it was great to see it magic 
5 minutes into the job, my wife comes to me and tells me that I woke up the kids. Long story short, the Dremel tool is way too noisy. I know a Dremel is not the item you should use, but it was sleeping in my tool shed and I’m still at the learning stage.
To save the marriage, I can either give up the CNC hobby or buy a quiet Cut spindle. The fisrt one is not an option at this stage, so I went for a little shopping. I saw a few on eBay and on inventables https://www.inventables.com/technologies/quiet-cut-spindle#30416-01
Do anybody know what the amount of power, I would be needing ? I don’t want to do anything hardcore. I want to cut wood, MDF, plastics and maybe a little aluminum in the future. Most of the spindles are around 400W. Will a spindle like this be way underpowered and if yes, what is the power that I should aim for.
Thanks
Why not make a plexiglass housing to cut down the noise?
http://www.tapplastics.com/product/plastics/cut_to_size_plastic
then glue it yourself
http://www.tapplastics.com/product_info/videos/how_to_glue_acrylic
A 400 watt spindle is a little more than 1/2 HP. I use a Bosch Colt Trim router that is 1 HP (745 watts). This works really well for light to medium duty. So I you want a spindle, you’ll probably want at least around a 800 watts. The link you provided shows a 600 watt which is .8 HP. It might be a good choice if you can return it should it not work for you.
Here is a good article for choosing the right size:
@Mark_Schouten I use this http://www.smw3d.com/quiet-cut-spindles/ the 400 watt. I have a dedicated 48v power supply going to the speed controller. I had to modify the mount.
I use it to cut Aluminum, in my office, with two kids in the house… at night. The wife complains a little bit the kids don’t wake up. The only noise is from the actual cutting, not the spindle. Too fast plunge speed into Al., and things are loud. Cut at 300mm/m on a 3.175mm tool. I’ll be ordering and stepping up to a 1/4" er-11.
I will be moving mine to the garage, not due to the noise so much but the odor of the cutting fluid.
Good luck man, also a nice engraved love note might buy you a little time…:-).
+Brandon Satterfield. how does your spindle compare to a Dremel. Judging on your feedback it looks that you have a fair amount of cutting power. I just want to make sure that I get the spindle that is strong enough for some future expansion
Don’t buy the one you pictured, it is a collet mounted on a regular motor.
It will develop horrible axial play in no time
@Alan_M Can you tell me which one you believe I should buy. do you know the one that @Brandon_Satterfield is talking about?
Thanks
It depends on what you are milling, and what the frame of your machine can handle, weight wise.
I think the best bang for the buck are the chinese 2.2kw spindle / vfd combos.
If that is too big for your machine, I would get a bosch colt, and a super-pid.
@Mark_Schouten I certainly don’t have issues with the one I use, I don’t cut PCBs and accuracy is perfect for my applications. With that said, the above comment is correct, it is a DC motor with a spindle attached. If you are going to manufacture, do heavy fast cutting, and are looking for fine detailed PCB carving you will need to be in a higher price point spindle. These you are looking at are fine for a hobbiest level CNC and a great dremel replacement.
Slightly off topic, I was reading about MF70 CNC conversions on hackaday and saw mention of swapping the stock (blown due to a mistake) for a brushless motor and ESC.
The problem with using a motor with a collet attached is that generally motors aren’t designed to stand up to the lateral forces that are applied when cutting. Yes you can somewhat get around this by making shallow cuts but eventually you will experience more and more run-out. Really it comes down to what you are willing to sacrifice, time or money. I’m not against saving money to do things slower and maybe not as accurate, but sometimes it isn’t an option.
Then again, these guys seem to have a passion for making it work.
Meh, just run the machine all of the time. Eventually the kid will get used to the sound. There are actually a lot of things you can do to reduce sound levels by just dampening vibrations. You could, as has been suggested, enclose your machine. Although I doubt if Plexiglass is the best material to use to reduce sound. You want to isolate, and stop noise from propagating away from your machine. I do not know what kind of a work table you have on your machine but it very well may be amplifying sound levels if it is say, a large sheet of wood, or something like that. They should perhaps call torsion boxes torque up the volume boxes. They don’t call that foam in a can Good Stuff for nothing. An open wall, floor, or ceiling, near your machine may be picking up noise from your machine and spreading it around. Once the vibrations get into the structure of your house they will travel.
I have 6040 with 800watts spindle and still have problems doing aluminum.
For sound you really cant get away from loud noise. You can try using coolant and air to clear chips and that could help a bit but mostly that corelates to feed speed and spindle speed. Slow down both and see what happens.
I would guess 2.2kw one with 20 er collet would be best for real work but still dont expect mill. Those AC spindles are high speed and have low tourqe so dont expect miracles on hard materials. They are meant for engraving hard and routing soft mayerials (the softer material higher speed of spindle you want and harder material slower and higher tourqe) If you are fine with dremel then you will be fine with less powerful spindles than 800watts.
I just converted g0704 mill to CNC and having issues with 1hp stock motor so i got some treadmill 3hp dc motor to upgrade. The point is that you will reach limits and always want more. Few cents from me.
@Darko_Bulatovic I have an 2.2kW spindle controlled by an 1.5kW VFD. If I put a RPM sensor on it, the VFD can operate in torque-mode.
Thoughts on torque at low RPM’s in that kind of setup?
@Michael_Jacobsen i dont have 2.2kw one so cant share experience but you lose torque by using 1.5kW VFD instead of matching one as torque is proportional to power that motor consumes.