Our Speeder is a great option for doing small end mill work on a lower RPM spindle. Its a mechanical RPM increaser that takes whatever the speed of the primary machine spindle is and multiplies it 3x. On the PCNC 1100, that means that 5000 RPM becomes 15000 RPM. For the PCNC 770, you can take 10000RPM up to 30000RPM, although we rate the device for that speed for short duty cycles. Continuous operation should be limited to 20000RPM. The Speeder really excels at small pocketing and engraving applications. Here's an example of a small engraving around a bar that we did for a recent product demonstration.
We released the first generation Speeder several years ago. Overall, we had positive feedback from early adopters of the product, but also ongoing maintenance/rebuild concerns with the spindle design. To address those issues, we relaunched the Speeder early this year with a new spindle design. The original generic bearings have been swapped for P4 (ABEC 7 equivalent) high performance bearing from NSK. We also use Kluberspeed, a special high temperature spindle grease. These improvements have led to some price increase over the initial product, but the tradeoff is that the Speeder that is substantially quieter, with less vibration and higher reliability. Its a much better product in our opinion, and much better aligned with how the Speeder was being used in practice by our customers. So far, we are quite happy with the results. Field tests have been very positive and confirm the results of our own internal benchmarking, where among other tests we measured the improvements over the intended RPM range in Noise Level and Vibration. You can see the qualitative improvements on the "old" vs. "new" results below.
Remember that the decibel noise scale is logarithmic. The difference between 80 dB and 100 dB is equivalent to the difference between a dial tone and a motorcycle. With respect to the vibration data, the thing to notice is how the new spindle design has significantly reduced vibration above 15000RPM when compared to the first generation Speeder, where speeds above that level resulted in a pronounced rise in vibration. For those of you that purchased the original Speeder, its possible to upgrade to the new design. Drop us a note to discuss. Finally, here's a quick tips and tricks video for setting up the Tormach Speeder.