Hans Arkesten's tilting router lift (adapted for a plunge router)
Hans Arkesten, from Sweden, writes:Hello Matthias,
I have just finished my build of your tilting router lift and I thought I would share my results with you.
Since the supply of
cylinder shaped routers here in Sweden is relatively
scarce I have used a standard plunge-based router and removed the
handles and control buttons. I also wanted to mount the router to my
contractor table saw from Bosch (probably almost the same model that is
called Bosch 4100 in the US) which means I had to make small
modifications to the router lift size.
I used 18mm Birch plywood and oak for the runners and mounting pieces.
The top and the two halves for the fence is made from particle board
with melamine. The particle board is not very strong but I have
strengthened the table with 19mm MDF and it seems to be okay. I added
some aluminium T-tracks to be able to fasten my feather boards and other
accessories.
The gears turned out to be really fun to make. My 2 year old daughter
could not stop playing with the jig I used to test them out. I probably
will have to build her something with gears now...
Matthias comments:
Dave Tenney had a similar experience with his
box joint jig gears
The mounting space on the saw is a little bit limited since the saw is
relatively small. It turns out that I can only tilt the router about
30-35 degrees but I will settle with that for now and see how often I
will use that function. My main goal was to get a router lift that was
easier to use than my previous solution.
I still have to come up with some kind of solution for dust collection and it seems that this cheap router makes a lot of noise so I will try to make some box to attenuate the sound. Maybe it is some kind of resonance in the saw structure and that would be hard to get rid of.
Lastly I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for your work with the website, the content is really unique and your "engineer approach" is really quite interesting.
Thanks,
/Hans, Sweden
Matthias comments:
Neat.
People often ask me if they can use plunge routers, and my standard answer is, no, they can’t be used.
Though with creativity, yes. But I imagine each router model would be a different challenge to mount.
I see you used two bolts near where the handles were. Did the router already have threaded holes there?
Hans replies:
No there were no threaded holes in the router and one of the holes was
actually smaller than the M8 screws I used to mount the router, so I had to
enlarge it slightly. I mounted these barrel nuts. See picture. Unfortunately
the standard size (for M8) I bought did not fit in one of the
mounting holes so I had to make a custom one. Luckily for me we have
some machinery and expertise at work for metalworking. ;)
In addition to these two mounting positions I added standard wood screws through the plastic housing in the back of the router as soon as it was well aligned with the sled and squared with the table.
I do not have a lot of experience from plunge routers (I only have three of them) but I think that this method would work on many of them. They are often constructed with a metal base where the plunge columns enter the body.
/Hans
More tilting router lifts:
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