Thanks Paco,

When I receive my mount for the Milwauke, I'll post any insights.

I haven't bought my router yet, but didn't figure it would be hard to remove the depth gage. I hope the mount didn't make provisions for the depth gage, since its not of use and easy to remove.

Greg

I do believe it is easy and I may have make clearer that no bearing removal is required to remove the depth screw.

The two things that I'd recommend to be cautious about is to not over tighten the screws since they thread in soft plastic and to mark the electrical connectors (2 black) from the speed sensor assembly if you feel it will help you at reassembly.

Paco, thanks for making this painless. My router is new so all it required was removing four screws and taking the black husing and red cap off by hand.
This will allow you to remove the depth screw. Now the only work is removing the brass brush covers (carefully), enough to clear the armature.
Once that is done you should be home free. Put everything back together (carefully) and test.

Thanks to alllllll the smart people
joe

Gerald,

I received my mount for the Milwaukee router. Its a very nice design and machining is first rate. My only concern is the cut out for the depth gage (red circle). There is approx. 1/8 inch of material. The mount is made from Aluminum. I'm only concerned about cracks from vibration. There are no sharp edges / cornors or stress concentration areas. It may be a non issue.

What's your take?

Greg

Attachment 298

It should be fine.

Thanks Gerald,

The mount is a good design. K2 has been great to deal with.

After looking at the "back plate", it would not be difficult to make a new one or modify the old. I'll probably just go through K2, since they are good to do bussiness with.

Greg

great price for Router Mount
 

K2cnc has an outlet store on ebay...I just picked up the porter cable 7518 mount for 50 dollars! Just thought I would share.
Sean

Gerald,

This weekend, I've been machining my router mounting brackets which was a stupid idea because I probably saved $20 after buying aluminum stock and bolts but wasted 2 days I could have used for something else. Anyway, I'm committed now so I might as well finish it. I'm getting close to the point where I need to drill some holes in the Z-axis plate for the brackets but I can't decide how high or how low my router should be. I looked at the pictures of your MM and it appears that the face of the collet is about 2 inches or so below the bottom of the Z-axis plate. Does that sound right to you? I guess it would be better to have the router too high rather than too low because the fix would be a extra sheet or two of mdf on the table.

Collet about 2" below the slide plate sounds fine.

This is an area that is never really discussed - thanks for highlighting it. As you noted, the further it goes below the plate, the less clearance you will have under the collet and cutter for loading thick jobs. However, if the router sits too high on its rail, the rail/slide collides with:
- edges of the job when cutting deep bowls for example.
- g-clamps used to hold the job down
- a dust collecting foot (which in itself is another can of worms)

Kress Spindles
 

Gerald,

Do you know any thing about kress spindles?

http://www.techno-isel.com/CNC_Route...s/variable.htm

Thanks

The "Kress spindle" is nothing special as far as I know - it is a typical "laminate trimmer" , or "die-grinder" without the extended neck. We used a Metabo for a long time as our only "spindle", and it worked fine.

Do realise that when most folk talk of spindles, they mean brushless motors designed for industrial use clamped into bigger machinery. The Kress is not one of the real spindles - it has brushes and is mainly intended as a portable handheld tool, ie. for die grinding or laminate trimming.

Thanks for the feed back.

I have just put a kress 1050w(input) router on my shopbot as a horizontal spindle. I havn't used it much yet but it looks good - I will report if it fails to delight.
The advantage over a similar router is that it has double business end bearings - this is similar to a spindle (and die grinder I guess), though they are ordinary deep V and inexpensive. It also takes collets up to 10mm and is comparatively quiet (to some) and cheap, as it is only the motor. It also has a fully machined steel 43mm lower housing that is useful for fixing it to the cnc.
It suffers from the usual brush motor router low power at low speed.

R.

Thanks for that report Ralph. It does sound better engineered than the more typical motors in that class. Must be the German pedigree.

rhfurniture,
What's the price of kress 1050w in US$

Bout $238, from a UK ebay shop.
Collets are about $37, mounting bracket about $50

Thanks Ralph

Milwaukee 5625 Bearing
 

Yesterday evening, my Milwaukee 5625 started making some bad noises. After hitting the E-Stop, external inspection revealed that the bottom bearing (P/N - 02-04-2006) was coming out of the Motor Housing (P/N - 28-50-0110).

Don't have any idea what might have cause this. Has anyone experienced this before?

I'm headed back to the shop this morning to dissemble and inspect for any internal damage.

More later.

The main/lower bearing should stay in it's sleeve in the housing. It should be flush with the housing. This is how it look normally. What I found is that those two retaining screws are not doing a good job. Fine threading in aluminum is no good at all. One of my router's retaining screw as stripped the housing thread after a couple of unscrew/screw. The lower main/lower bearing is press fit in the housing but under heavy working conditions, it may slip out if the retaining screw fail. I have fix mine with locking compound so "it doesn't move".

Hope that help.

Thanks Paco. Your blog was a big help.

It looks like the culprit was that black bristle from the DC foot skiting. Some how (not clear yet) it got sucked up (thought router was down draft) and pushed the bearing out.

Cleaned everything and no damage. Putting back together and test run shortly.

Side Note: Why is it fun to take things apart ? Must be in a man's DNA. :)

Edit: Just looked at Paco's bearing link. Oops. I never put the two screws back in after removing the plastic flow diverter along time back. Surprised it has been running this long. I guess it's a good test that shows how little force is pushing the bearings out.

Gerald, I like the 'quick change mount' feature you made into your mount. (two alignment pins and one bolt to pull it tight to the Z-plate). Do you have plans for your router mount or could you make them available?

I was looking at the pictures from a couple of years ago earlier in this thread.

Jack, that mount was done long before people nagged me to keep plans of these things :D

The pin holes and bolt hole are on the current z-slide drawings, but I havn't noticed anyone using them yet.

Geald you are slipping.....http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showt...&postcount=161

I did use it

Thanks for reminding me Kobus . . . . . that I am getting old and losing my memory :(. Well that was more than a year ago! :)

Gerald,
I used the pin and bolt mount for my most recent spindle attachment.
Absolutely 100% needed! ...and works perfectly.
Due to the spindle casing being threaded, I had to make a sub-attachment plate to attach to the z-slide. The pin arrangement worked perfectly.
I will post pics next week when I get back to the machine.

Sean

I bet, if someone that has the talents and tools (not me currently :( ) drew up a quick drawing of a good pin and bolt mount plate with needed specs, it would be used. Having a couple of them included in laser cut parts (though not really needed) would encourage its use.

Especially noting the extra holes needed for the K2 router attachment and some popular spindle, and any other noted popular attachments (drills, scanner/probe, knife for vinyl, etc)

Just a thought.

Gerald,
I am going to use the same Makita router (not with the switch on the handle) that is shown in your post #16 on page 1. The handle mounting ears in your photo's doesn't look as if it was trimmed or cut back. When I check my router for the clearance in the y-car it was fouling as much as 5mm against the opening edge in the car(spider plate bolting space). Was the y-car dxf modified after this or did you grind the mounting ears back?

Johan, there was no grinding/cutting of the router "ears", and the hole in the y-car has never been widened/narrowed since the first drawing files (200mm clear). I think our ears might still be below part 10 30 455 when the z is fully up, but that machine has a z-slide that doesn't go as high as the newer 6-roller design.

But, there was another collision that needed some grinding . . . . The gusset part of 10 20 452 touched a lumpy part of the router's plastic body when the y-car ran fully across to the far side, and the z was fully retracted. Maybe about a 6mm deep notch was needed to clear the part indicated below:

Attachment 5557

Thanks. You are right of course! The router doesn't go so high to get even close to the cut out in the car. I must learn to check things a little longer, specifically the assemblys! :)
I will file the 6mm away on the router body at final assembly.

Johan, we didn't make any permanent mods to the router - the 6mm notch was in part 10 20 452.

PS. Hennie dropped in here yesterday. Showed him my normal tool supplier Power Tool Repairs in Woodstock, and he started drooling at the cutters on display . . . :)