What wire for VFD--->Spindle Chinese Water Cooled 2.2kw

1

I’m installing one of the common chinese 2.2KW water cooled spindles on my machine. It seems like I should be using shielded 14 gauge but that doesn’t so much seem to be a thing.

I’ve got 14ga romex (unshielded) and I’ve got shielded 18ga wire. I’m tempted to use the 18ga since the 2.2kw is probably an exaggeration and the machine will never run unattended anyway for fear of material catching fire. What do you guys think?

To be clear, the breaker to the VFD will be 12 or 14 gauge Romex on a 15A breaker (that’s oversized wire either way), I’m asking about the wire that runs from the VFD to the Spindle on the CNC router.

2.2KW Chinese Water Cooled Spindle w/included VFD
Avid 48/96 Standard Machine
Avid DIY Nema 23 electronics (MX4660) and motors with SmoothStepper
(no metal enclosure on electronics but I can add one if really needed)

2

On my small (home made 16" X 32") machine, I used 14 g wire and wrapped it in tin foil from the VFD to the spindle. Then wrapped all that in wire loom
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This has worked for over 14 years.

edit : you need to ground one end of the tin foil, I did this but wrapping a wire around the tin foil, a couple of wraps, and grounding it to the VFD

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3

These kinds of things are available on the line

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4

Ha, I thought about doing exactly that but I wasn’t going to to confess to it!

5

I searched google for close to an hour and didn’t find this. I was searching for wire instead of cable, maybe that’s where I went wrong. Thanks for the link.

6

Just buy spindle cable from wireandcableyourway.com. The 16/4 is probably fine. 14/4 is better, but the connectors are annoying to fit with 14ga.

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7

I used this: https://lappaustralia.com.au/en/vsd-cable-flex-4g25-3-e. Should be an equivalent in St elsewhere.

I also stuck a couple of suppressors on the various cables to reduce interference - without them the VFD knocks out things like the wifi. Still does occasionally…!

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8

Thanks guys. I bought one of the cable kits on ebay. I was searching for “spindle to VFD shielded cable” and similar, mostly focusing on the “spindle” term. I didn’t think to just search for “CNC cable”!