Matsuura spindles

Just curious on others peoples experience with the matsuura 15k grease spindles? We have currently been going through about 1 spindle per year. Seems a little excessive. Last spindle we turned nearly every program on the machine to run 10k rpm. Are others having issues with them also?

Would help to know the cutting conditions and how the spindle is failing. Are these rebuilds, or factory replacements that are failing, and what's the failure method?

Cutting aluminum, running around 10k rpm, everything 100% from the factory.

Running about the same parameters on other machines we are not seeing this failure.

We still don't know how they're failing - is it contamination of the lower bearings, grease washout, overheating the bearings, etc?

What has Matsuura had to say about failure?

operator crashing, same machine, ?
how many years? one spindle a year on one machine more than 3 times I would make them replace it or sell the machine. barring not being crashed

Unahorn said:

Just curious on others peoples experience with the matsuura 15k grease spindles? We have currently been going through about 1 spindle per year. Seems a little excessive. Last spindle we turned nearly every program on the machine to run 10k rpm. Are others having issues with them also?

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Well the question is about others and if they are having issues also. Seems a few other on Instagram are also. And would like to know how many others are having similar situations.

Delw said:

operator crashing, same machine, ?
how many years? one spindle a year on one machine more than 3 times I would make them replace it or sell the machine. barring not being crashed

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Never been crashed. They have checked alignment every time. I am the one who runs and sets it up the machine, no one except me. Operators can’t mess anything up, the machine is on a fms.

Unahorn said:

Never been crashed. They have checked alignment every time. I am the one who runs and sets it up the machine, no one except me. Operators can’t mess anything up, the machine is on a fms.

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I am guessing its not the same lot of spindles sense its every year so you could rule out a bad lot. I am guessing the head on your machine is out of wack. Might be too tight or twisted causing early spindle problems, or they just dont know what there doing and f'd up putting it in.

Mine just failed, too, and I am very concerned.
My wife and I have owned a small CNC shop for 33 years and this is my first spindle failure.
You know how some guys approach retirement and splurge on that dream car, or boat or whatever? Well, I've always dreamed of owning a Matsuura. 6 years ago I picked up some work that involves some complex contouring - it needs someone to who pays attention and repeats on a fairly regular basis; good work for me as I approach retirement. An opportunity came up to buy a new Matsuura H.Plus-300 and I begged my wife for it like a boy begs for a puppy, I promised to take care of it and that we could make money off it for a very, very long time.
I bought all new tools and babied her; I even named her "Babe" (she's big and blue). The job runs for 3-4 weeks and then is usually off for a week or two. One shift. Most of the work is done with endmills running 3,000-6,000 rpm. There is a deburring operation that runs at 8,000rpm with a small chamfer tool. The 3" face mill just skins the face and a 2" HF mill is the rougher. The machine has been under power for only 3800 hours with 988 hours of cut time. I am the only one who has ever run it, and it has never been crashed. I point her out with pride saying ". . . and there's my baby".
Last year, I was sent an email from Yamazen that I needed to run a daily warmup program, bringing her up to 15,000rpm every morning. I did it of course - anything to take care of my baby. Not too much longer, she started to whine at high speed. I didn't notice at first, since the change was gradual, but my son pointed it out. Under the assumption that once a spindle fails, there is nothing to do but replace the spindle, I kept her under 8,000 rpm and got a few months ahead on my parts.
The machine had coolant through prep when I bought it but I didn't have the pump added until 2019; I replaced the rotary union in hopes that it was squealing from sitting for several years without coolant running through and that's where the noise came from. It didn't make a difference and when I ran the the warmup program the spindle bearings failed.
A new spindle (including core exchange) is $30,000, which has resulted in poor sleep over worrying about what I could have done differently.
I have more than a dozen CNC machines here. I bought my first HMC in 2003, it was a beat up repo MHI H4b. That machine has run every day for 19 years - I've had the spindle reground in place TWICE from crashes so bad that the pull studs broke, yet it keeps turning. My 16 year old 50 taper HMC runs all day, ramping that heavy tool up to 12,000rpm. We bought our first VMC in 1989 and it runs all day every day, who knows how many crashes it's been through?
Is there any hope that Matsuura with do something about this? I knew they were aware of potential problem when they implemented a new protocol on a 5 year old machine and this post confirms my suspicion. I know the machine is well past warranty and has been working on a shop floor for 5 years, so there's no point in hiring a lawyer or anything, but I also know that that high quality engineered products don't fail without a reason, and since I didn't do anything it must have been a design or construction flaw. The question is: will Matsuura acknowledge that? What was the resolution to the OPs situation? Obviously I must order the spindle and pay to have it fixed since I have to start making parts again soon.

The MAM machines have a reputation for eating spindles. They put a mediocre spindle in a five axis machine that often winds up on a pallet pool making aerospace parts. Long hours at spindle max just cook them. I suspect it's a problem throughout the Matsuura product line, but shops doing complex aluminum work are the most likely to suffer.

Grease pack spindles typically do not like to be run at spindle max for extended periods of time. Even just stopping to do a tool change every 30 minutes can help extend their life dramatically. Some builders actually tell you (in the manual) that when doing mold surfaces a tool change must be programmed every XX number of hours. I do not understand why some of the premium builders continue to use grease pack spindles despite the absurd liability.

I know of one place where they just run at spindle max and suffer with the increased cost of replacements and downtime. Dropping the RPM's on your programs from 15k to 10k isn't exactly free.

Given your circumstances, it might be worthwhile to find an independent spindle repair shop to rebuild your existing spindle. While it might take a little more time than a new unit swap, cost should be roughly half, and good shops can look for probable cause of the failure and address it.

There's a number of established spindle shops here in NH if you can't find someone you like in WI.

This was also a greased bearing spindle? You can get an analysis done of the old lubricant for cheap money, and you can talk to the rebuilder about possibly upgrading the grease. Maybe talk to Kluber?

And if you're only running to 8k, perhaps revise the warmup program to limit at that speed.

I've heard of these issues on the 15k spindles over the last few months as I've been poking around a bit. I had heard of the problems here on PM but initially couldn't find a shop that actually had the problems themselves. The one I bought had the 20k greased spindle and I spoke with one of the guys over at the old shop yesterday and they've had it running all day every day for a few years now but it has pretty constant tool changes for what they feed it.

This is disconcerting as my next step up in the business plan was likely going to be an MX series with pallets or an H-Plus, likely with the 15k spindle. Maybe time to see if a Grob fits the floorspace instead...

FWIW the greased spindles are usually specified for work that can't be contaminated with spindle oil. I have never seen it called on a print but I did have a customer ask about it once.

We have 3 beat up second hand MAMs, 2006-2011s, 15k. All have had spindles replaced every 10-15k hours of run time according the previous owners maintenance logs. For example, the 2006 has about 45k running hours (not power-on hours) and 3 spindle changes. Once a year seems excessive considering if the machine ran non stop that wouldn't even crack 10k hours.

These machines are going to have an easy life from here on out doing prototype runs. We'll let em run for a month non-stop here and there, then sit while we do 1-10 part quickies.

How many running hours on the more common 15k RPM failed spindles? Is 10-15k hours unacceptable? I see the failure mentioned above at under 1000 hours. That's not legit and I'd be suppressed if Matsuura left you hanging. I've experienced first hand the pride they take in their product and being the person who is constantly digging into these things to setup and perform PMs I can say that the machines are built with care and good intent to last a long time.

Edit:
I also must add that the previous owners defeated the oil chiller alarm on one of our 2006s before we got it. The chiller wasn't working or circulating oil at all for at least 6 months of us running it and who knows how long before that. Our shop can get to the 80s on hot summer days and it just kept crankin. They did a bunch of other things to trash these machines that we've since remedied the best we can but I think at this point we're pretty sold Matsuura makes a rock solid machine. There are obviously lots of other great machines out there in the price bracket as well.

barbter said:

^^^perhaps....on your older machines, you have the oil mist spindle???

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I'm not sure where the oil misting would be coming from then. I haven't dug too far into the spindle system yet but there is no spindle oiling system to keep topped off. Unless somehow the oil chiller loop feeds oil through the spindle bearings themselves, it looks like the oiling schematics only show oil being feed through base plates and stuff to keep everything at a consistent temperature. I thought originally the bearings were being fed with constant oil flow from the chiller but that doesn't seam reasonable. I could do some more digging and find out. I'm just sharing our general experience with Matsuura spindles so far. Any easy way to tell what kind of spindles we have?

Do you have an oil reservoir that's feeding the ways that needs replenishing every so often? Do you ever notice drops of lube around the spindle nose?

If so, it's reasonable to think you have oil-mist lubrication of the spindle. If you never notice any oil around the spindle nose (not coolant), then more likely it's grease.

Milland said:

Do you have an oil reservoir that's feeding the ways that needs replenishing every so often? Do you ever notice drops of lube around the spindle nose?

If so, it's reasonable to think you have oil-mist lubrication of the spindle. If you never notice any oil around the spindle nose (not coolant), then more likely it's grease.

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The linear guides, ball screws, and support bearings are grease fed with zerks on the air panel. There is no oil reservoir on the machine that needs replenishing. I also haven't noticed oil anywhere/under the spindle inside the enclosure.

Rick Finsta said:

I've heard of these issues on the 15k spindles over the last few months as I've been poking around a bit. I had heard of the problems here on PM but initially couldn't find a shop that actually had the problems themselves. The one I bought had the 20k greased spindle and I spoke with one of the guys over at the old shop yesterday and they've had it running all day every day for a few years now but it has pretty constant tool changes for what they feed it.

This is disconcerting as my next step up in the business plan was likely going to be an MX series with pallets or an H-Plus, likely with the 15k spindle. Maybe time to see if a Grob fits the floorspace instead...

FWIW the greased spindles are usually specified for work that can't be contaminated with spindle oil. I have never seen it called on a print but I did have a customer ask about it once.

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i would HIGHLY recommend you look into GF mikron. they have entry level machines (E500/700) and high end (P500/700).
StepTec is arguably some of the best spindles in the industry. the entry level E500 would be not much more than a MX330 and is lightyears ahead IMO. especially being heidenhain.

In the mid 90s when Matsuura introduced the MAM series with 15k 40 taper spindle it was an air-oil mist lubed unit. They were crap early on and sometimes failed in less than a month when used regularly at 12-15k. To their credit, Matsuura stood by the product and replaced lots of spindles and extended warranty coverage on the machines too. One of my customers at the time had a 2 machine, 27 pallet, MAM600 cell. In about 3 years time it had gone through probably 8 spindles. Over time, the failures became less frequent as the design and specs were tweaked. By the late 90s a final set of new spindles were installed that lasted until the cell was sold some years later.

There is nothing wrong with greased spindles in general when properly designed and spec'd. Another 2 machine, 20 pallet, Makino cell with 20k 40 taper greased spindles that I know of, went over 10 years before a failure. Interestingly, the second machine in that cell had its spindle fail less than 6 months after the first machine's. Pretty clear to me that in frequent high speed use, about 10 years was the expected life.

We have several Matsurra's, different vintages, different spindles. Only 1 is a grease pack 15K spindle...we got the machine used, it does appear that the spindle had been replaced in the past, but so far so good, no problems with that machine.
We also have 3 MX330's...all 20K RPM, 2 being grease spindles and one air-oil.

Machine 1 is a 2017, grease spindle with 30,000 spindle hours, machine 2 is a 2018, grease spindle with 24,000 hours, machine 3 is a 2020, air-oil spindle with 10,000 hours. Knock on wood, no problems with spindles on those 3 machines. Actually prefer the grease spindle on those machines, they run MUCH quieter than the air-oil. Note that the programs we are running the spindle likely averages 7000 RPM, some tools running at 1500, some tools running at 20K.

On our 2 MAM72-63V's, we have had to put new spindles in both (12K grease spindles). One of them the spindle went out after 2 years, nowhere near the run hours of the before mentioned MX spindles (maybe 6-8000 hours). We have older machines with 12K grease spindles that just run. Unknown hours, machines are 20+ years old and still going strong.