Westwind spindles?

[Sheldon Dingwall]

I realize this is deviating from pickup making a bit except we use a lot of circuitboards in our pickup making. Anyone have experience with a Westwind spindle? I'm wondering about the driller/router versions. Are they a PIA to run, keep cool. Do they have enough torque to profile rout circuitboards or rout fret slots?

[jonson]

I run a big overhead router and a couple of smaller ones which cope very well and can see no reason what you are looking at cannot do the same. A quick google tells me it's what they are made for and my only worry would be that air powered is usually very fast but other than that why not. Some guys do cut fret slots with dremels which can run very high speeds but speed even on air power can be controlled.

[Joe Gwinn]

I realize this is deviating from pickup making a bit except we use a lot of circuitboards in our pickup making. Anyone have experience with a Westwind spindle? I'm wondering about the driller/router versions. Are they a PIA to run, keep cool. Do they have enough torque to profile rout circuitboards or rout fret slots?

I would comment that the dust from routing most circuit board materials is pretty noxious, especially for glass-based materials, so be sure to also have an adequate dust control system.

[David Schwab]

Are you routing the circuit boards to form the traces, or to cut them to size?

[Sheldon Dingwall]

We mechanically etch the isolations between traces, drill then profile rout circuitboards. It's fussy, messy work. I recently crashed my spindle speeder beyond repair, have an air turbine tool that will be brought into service next week. The surface speed of small cutters even at 65K RPM is still pretty slow. The Westwinds will rout at 120-150K RPM. I will live in fear of crashing the air turbine as they are expensive to replace and don't pop up on ebay very often. There's a bunch of Westwinds on ebay right now.

[David King]

Westwind Air Bearings - Spindles
Sheldon, I don't see any torque ratings or HP listed but it sounds like the slower one, the M320 is good at cutting through 3 layers of G10 at a time at 80k rpm. I'd think air bearing might be a little more resilient to crashes than other types but I don't know that. I would want to have nice dry air just to prevent condensate and rusting over time.

[David Schwab]

It's fussy, messy work.

That's why I was asking. I think I prefer to chemically etch them, but then I don't have a CNC router.

I use a mini table saw to cut the PCB material. That's dusty enough!

[David King]

Sheldon, are you doing this on the Fadal now?

[Sheldon Dingwall]

Hi DK, yes, on the Fadal. I did a test using CA to glue a small sheet to a phenolic backer so I could profile all the way through without bridges and without complicated vacuum fixturing. It worked great but took over 24 hrs soaking in acetone to get the parts to come off easily. I've got some Mitee-grip sheet on order. We'll see how that works.

[David King]

I'd try elmers white glue provided the material can handle a hot water bath.
http://www.miteebite.com/products/mitee_grip_e.html looks promising as long as clean up isn't too onerous.

[Sheldon Dingwall]

Never thought of white glue. Thanks. Mitee-grip cleans up with heat and or alcohol.