Does anyone warm up their spindle prior to running their first job of the day, or consider it unnecessary?
I was surprised to not see this mentioned in any docs for the Sienci spindles.
I don’t, other people feel it is necessary. Pick your poison.
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Hey @miles,
Great question. If your spindle is sitting in a cold shop overnight, it would benefit from a warmup. Here is a file you can run to give you a 10 min warmup session, before you start making chips fly.
We’ll be adding it to our resources too.
Sienci 1.5kW Spindle Warm-up.gcode (82 Bytes)
Cheers,
Stephen
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@StephenCampbell Why not add it as a tool along with surfacing, squaring, et al.?
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Please add a tool to warm up the shop!
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Hey @Chucky_ott,
I really like where your head is at. Stay tuned in for more improvements to gSender!
Cheers,
Stephen
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Usual preface, I’m with PreciseBits. So while I try to only post general information take everything I say with the understanding that I have a bias.
You should always warm the spindle up before cutting. This due to the fact that the bearings slightly swell at running temp and that is the size they are spec’ed to run at (where everything is “tight”). If you load it cold there’s some slop in the bearings that can lead to accelerated wear, more runout, and/or in the worst cases damage. Additionally, the grease in the spindle will “settle” and it needs to be warmed up to get where it’s suppose to be.
Hope that’s useful. Let me know if there’s something I can help with.
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Is there a warmup file for the 2.2 k Sienci spindle? Could we get the link? I’m going to start warming my spindle
Thank you!
Rick
Adding to gSender will be nice improvement. I know I would use it for the unheated area the AltMill will live in.
@Rdaigneault @DavidB Excuse my ignorance, but why do you need a file? Can’t you simply turn the spindle on and run it until it warms up?
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News to me. I didn’t know this at all. When I assembled my altmil this wasn’t in the instructions. My search also revealed that to properly warm up the spindle, you run it in stages of 25% speed, 50% speed 100%. The g- code manages that for you. I looked in Sienci resources and there is a g-sender file for spindle warmup. In that section, Sienci recommends warming up the spindle. Code and text below.
For regular maintenance of your spindle, we recommend running a shorter “warm up” g-code.
It’s silly really unless you have a ridiculous cold shop for some reason. I keep the shop between 60-75 F usually. I sometimes turn it on while I’m getting setup for a few minutes. That’s all that’s necessary really just to make sure the bearings aren’t starting up and going under load immediately when cold.
As with the large CNC machines, a program allows the user to do other things while the spindle runs through various speeds to slowly warm the bearings in stages.
Typically a dwell is added to multiple speed commands so you hit go, it runs through the stages over 15 minutes or so and you can get coffee, prep material, hold a seance or whatever you need to start the day. 
Think of it like a car - when you start your car do you immediately mash the gas everywhere you go or do you accelerate gradually A to B? Same principle with the spindle. (And at least the car has an oil pump 
)
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