Gcolombo Spindle repair

[cge77]

Hi

We have 2 chinese machines one 24 months and another 2 months old. They both have the same 10HP ATC spindle from Gcolombo
We mainly cut Aluminium with our 2 machines
We have a catastrophic spindle bearing failure recently after running the tool vertically into material at high speed ( our fault).
We got a few quotes to have the spindle repaired all range at about 50% of the new spindle cost (about 3K)
Recently we had the spindle on the second machine go, not sure why but suddenly started getting very noisy, it seems like the bearings have also gone !!
I'd love to know why on a such a new motor like this but more importantly, now I have 2 motors to fix I'd like to fix them myself.
Everyone I speak to makes it sound like it's black magic and I have no hope !

That smells challenge to me, has anyone ever done this ?
Is it that hard to pull the spindle apart and change bearings ?
Do you need to rebalance it after wards ?

Thanks for any help

[magma-joe]

cge77,

Here is a link that might get you on the right track. The shopbot forum has some talk of people rebuilding their own spindles. You might post your question there.

Colombo Spindle Rebuild - Let's Talk ShopBot

Magma-joe