Maximum Speed for Desktops?

[woodshop]

After beating one of our Desktops up for 2 years, running at different speeds through all species of wood, we have decided that 60 ipm's is the maximum speed FOR THE HEALTH OF THE MACHINE.

We've cut at many different speeds, from as low as 8 ipm's to as high as 95.

However, we feel the desktop has an ideal top speed: 60 ipm's.

I wonder what the ShopBot company thinks is a max speed? Does the Desktop have an official speed rating?

[Max Girouard]

We use the desktop to rough out maple, spruce and ebony for our instruments. 240 ipm on all end mill roughing and ball mill final passes. Been running since 2012 several hundred hours a year with no maintenance other than oiling the bearings once in a while. The shopbot specs on the desktop from the website quote 4 inches per second (240 ipm) cut and 6 inches per second ( 360 ipm) jog.

Determining the cut speed on a machine without all the other parameters such as tool geometry, depth of cut, overstep, ramp values etc..., would't give you a very good picture of possible speeds that can be obtained.

[Brady Watson]

Dave,
A well maintained DT should have no trouble cutting up to 4 ips and jog up to 6 ips. If you don't protect the block bearings from chips and debris they'll get clogged, drag and bog the machine down. Inspect the bearings on all axes. To really do this properly you need to disconnect each leadscrew and move it around by hand. SB sells replacements...avoid arbitrarily sliding the bearings off the end of the rail because the balls can fall out.

[scottp55]

Like Max said,
MANY different variables.
Most of my production stuff was small(.75-1.75" buttons in 5 species cherry to bloodwood) and best cuts were slightly under 1 IPS for small VBits.
1 IPS was a good starting point for harder exotics, and then tweaked for best cut,but certain bits and cuts are now dialed in for anywhere between 2-3.5IPS.
For small 3D work my best starting point for quality is 1.5IPS in all axis unless it's smaller than 2" in the raster direction.
The Desktop will handle it all, IF it's within reason.
Pretty much all my stuff now are small one ofs, so I'm pretty conservative and quality is my most important aspect though.
Not much sense asking my machine to do 3IPS on a 2" 3D design:) (it'll never get to speed, and gets a little "clunky" which IS bad).
Doubt very much your hurting your machine so long as you Listen to it and the cut sounds and looks good.
scott

[woodshop]

Ok... And thanks.
We wanted to hear from the community as to what kind of speeds they think the desktop is at it's best.
If we took a new out-of-the-box desktop, set it up and started cutting through the AIR, we feel that 60 inches per minute is ideal.
No sense in tearing the machine up with speed just because it can go fast!

(We use the 60 ipm as our max speed in our calculations for pricing.) Additionally, we find little time savings between 60 and 90 ipm's.

((Is there a video for checking those bearings?))