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Building or Buying a Wood routing table.. Beginnners guide.. / Planning Strength, speed, stability..
« on: October 10, 2006, 12:45:13 PM »
PSSS....
I got a secret!!.
PSSS- Planning, strength , speed and stability..
Well, Ive planned this before. So have a few thousand others. A router table. How much easier can it get, all you need
is a table, a router , some motors, drivers, wires, and a breakout board. Sounds pretty simple, after all they all plug together
work out of the box, right? Wrong!. Well, OK,..sometimes..
There are many ways to start. Some of you will just want to buy a table on the internet, and get running. No problem there, right?
WRONG!. The internet IS a great place to buy a table, and many of the builders out there are fantastic at supporting their products,
and they sell great products. From motors, to drivers, to frames, skeletons, bearings, gantries and full "turnkey" systems. But that doesn't
make it plug and play, nor does it mean they match your needs. You need to PLAN!!, I didn't on my first, planned quite a bit on my second,
and intend to plan all to hell on my third. (Does this tell you something.
). Planning is very important even if you intend on buying a finished
routing system complete. Planning takes into account all the rest.. Speed, strength , stability and a whole lot of other things not listed in above.
Planning lets you hit the snags in the rebuild stage, which can save you lots of time and money..
Remember the ramplings I talked about earlier in the topics.. this is one of them..
Money: How cheap can I go. ?
This is a pretty typical question. With no absolute answer. My own philosophy is cheap is good, but you have to tie that into my other
philosophy "If it works, its a good solution.". The test of any system is , in the end, does it work well. "Well" is a relative term. Some want
very fast, others will take what they can get.. Ive done this to much to "take what I can get.". Cheap usually means bad, inexpensive is a better
term.
I wont be purposely picking on any vendors here, and Ill ask no one else to do so as well. Being that quality is relative to what you need, one mans junk is another's
treasure. That being said, cost is a factor to consider and the term "You get what you pay for" is something you need to trust to be true. For example,
a Gecko 201 ( A motor controller) , last I checked, was about 120 bucks a pop. Thats roughly 300.00 for a 3 axis system. Check on Ebay and you'll find many at
about 39.95 for three axis. Which one do you think works better? If you said the 39.95 one, please slap yourself for me, as my keyboard doesn't have that function.
You know, as well as I , that a 39.95 3-axis whizzbang is not going to function as well as a 330.00 set of motor drivers. Is the 39.995 junk? No, not necessarily, but it
may be designed to do something lighter than what you want. Thats not to say either that the $600.00 per diver motor drivers are better than the 300.00 ones.
They may be, depends on the system, the use and the reason your using them. (Nothing is simple, eh? -- we Canadians say -eh? allot..).
My general rule is to check any driver , power supply, bearing...whatever, carefully with other users. The Mach3 group , for example has about 6000 of them.
All great people that are happy yo tell you of their mistakes, and experiences. (Hopefully mistakes not being using Mach3., eh? ).
So when contemplatling any component, check around, a single saved mistake can save you time and money. OR you can be like me with shelves filled with
stuff you replaced and really wouldn't use again, but too good to throw away.. So .. to stop rambling.. CHECK OUT YOUR PLANS..Don't cheap out unless others tell you
its OK to. I'm sure many will shudder at some of the things I do, but on the other hand, I need only live with myself and my friend Bob, and we'll undoubtedly curse
each other frequently. (We always have..).
When planning a table, consider everything you want to use it for. Size increases cost. More importantly, it increases space. I once had half my basement filled with table,
till Bob was kind enough to take it to his place, now HE has a garage full of table. (And adding his third..this one we'll be building as we go on this forum.. )
Of course for some space is available, so if likewise, money is as well, then 4x8 foot is awfully nice to have. For many though, 4 x 4 is a good compromise.. With a stand
and turning things around even a 4x4 can cut 4x8..just a bit more work is all.
Speed is a function of the motors and the mechanics. As well as the software. We'll go into that in another topic, but just so you know that end resultant speed is
tied to many things other than just motors and dirvers.
Stability is very important. My first table was built with some Thompson linear bearing, good, but not great ones, and flimsy gantry strenth. I regretted it quickly.
Being Strong usually means heavy. Heavy is good. Flimsy is bad. I know, youve seen tose wooden gantrys out ehre using drawer slides as bearing. Yes, they will
work, but I havent met the person yet who didnt rip it all apart and rebuild. So its a great learnign experience, but you probably wont like the end result. You
want strength and power, in equal measures to make a good router table. Not a bad idea to ask others what they think of your design as well. (I wont do that as I
have a sensitive nature and hate to be laughed at, but then I probably have more spare parts than you, so Im not really wasting much by trying., and besides,
you may gain from watching my mistakes and my redesigns to fix our troubles..
to be continued...
Art
I got a secret!!.
PSSS- Planning, strength , speed and stability..
Well, Ive planned this before. So have a few thousand others. A router table. How much easier can it get, all you need
is a table, a router , some motors, drivers, wires, and a breakout board. Sounds pretty simple, after all they all plug together
work out of the box, right? Wrong!. Well, OK,..sometimes..
There are many ways to start. Some of you will just want to buy a table on the internet, and get running. No problem there, right?
WRONG!. The internet IS a great place to buy a table, and many of the builders out there are fantastic at supporting their products,
and they sell great products. From motors, to drivers, to frames, skeletons, bearings, gantries and full "turnkey" systems. But that doesn't
make it plug and play, nor does it mean they match your needs. You need to PLAN!!, I didn't on my first, planned quite a bit on my second,
and intend to plan all to hell on my third. (Does this tell you something.
). Planning is very important even if you intend on buying a finished routing system complete. Planning takes into account all the rest.. Speed, strength , stability and a whole lot of other things not listed in above.
Planning lets you hit the snags in the rebuild stage, which can save you lots of time and money..
Remember the ramplings I talked about earlier in the topics.. this is one of them..
Money: How cheap can I go. ?
This is a pretty typical question. With no absolute answer. My own philosophy is cheap is good, but you have to tie that into my other
philosophy "If it works, its a good solution.". The test of any system is , in the end, does it work well. "Well" is a relative term. Some want
very fast, others will take what they can get.. Ive done this to much to "take what I can get.". Cheap usually means bad, inexpensive is a better
term.
I wont be purposely picking on any vendors here, and Ill ask no one else to do so as well. Being that quality is relative to what you need, one mans junk is another's
treasure. That being said, cost is a factor to consider and the term "You get what you pay for" is something you need to trust to be true. For example,
a Gecko 201 ( A motor controller) , last I checked, was about 120 bucks a pop. Thats roughly 300.00 for a 3 axis system. Check on Ebay and you'll find many at
about 39.95 for three axis. Which one do you think works better? If you said the 39.95 one, please slap yourself for me, as my keyboard doesn't have that function.
You know, as well as I , that a 39.95 3-axis whizzbang is not going to function as well as a 330.00 set of motor drivers. Is the 39.995 junk? No, not necessarily, but it
may be designed to do something lighter than what you want. Thats not to say either that the $600.00 per diver motor drivers are better than the 300.00 ones.
They may be, depends on the system, the use and the reason your using them. (Nothing is simple, eh? -- we Canadians say -eh? allot..).
My general rule is to check any driver , power supply, bearing...whatever, carefully with other users. The Mach3 group , for example has about 6000 of them.
All great people that are happy yo tell you of their mistakes, and experiences. (Hopefully mistakes not being using Mach3., eh? ).
So when contemplatling any component, check around, a single saved mistake can save you time and money. OR you can be like me with shelves filled with
stuff you replaced and really wouldn't use again, but too good to throw away.. So .. to stop rambling.. CHECK OUT YOUR PLANS..Don't cheap out unless others tell you
its OK to. I'm sure many will shudder at some of the things I do, but on the other hand, I need only live with myself and my friend Bob, and we'll undoubtedly curse
each other frequently. (We always have..).
When planning a table, consider everything you want to use it for. Size increases cost. More importantly, it increases space. I once had half my basement filled with table,
till Bob was kind enough to take it to his place, now HE has a garage full of table. (And adding his third..this one we'll be building as we go on this forum.. )
Of course for some space is available, so if likewise, money is as well, then 4x8 foot is awfully nice to have. For many though, 4 x 4 is a good compromise.. With a stand
and turning things around even a 4x4 can cut 4x8..just a bit more work is all.
Speed is a function of the motors and the mechanics. As well as the software. We'll go into that in another topic, but just so you know that end resultant speed is
tied to many things other than just motors and dirvers.
Stability is very important. My first table was built with some Thompson linear bearing, good, but not great ones, and flimsy gantry strenth. I regretted it quickly.
Being Strong usually means heavy. Heavy is good. Flimsy is bad. I know, youve seen tose wooden gantrys out ehre using drawer slides as bearing. Yes, they will
work, but I havent met the person yet who didnt rip it all apart and rebuild. So its a great learnign experience, but you probably wont like the end result. You
want strength and power, in equal measures to make a good router table. Not a bad idea to ask others what they think of your design as well. (I wont do that as I
have a sensitive nature and hate to be laughed at, but then I probably have more spare parts than you, so Im not really wasting much by trying.
, and besides, you may gain from watching my mistakes and my redesigns to fix our troubles..
to be continued...
Art