Not sure what they do but I had a buddy worked at the GM battery plant if Oshawa. The batteries were tested and if they passed they were kept as Delco batteries but if they failed they were sold to various other companies to market as their own. How badly it failed determined which company would buy it. According to him Canadian Tire took the lowest grade. I can believe it the last one I bought from them lasted 6 months and shorted internally, of course I was no where near a CTC store and went to a GM dealer and bought a Delco - it lasted 6 years.
I have bought one of those kits a year ago and I'm really happy with it. The only thing is there is a lot of play in the fixed router base height adjustment. If you overshoot the height and want to lower the bit there are some idle turns before the other end of the cam grips in the other end of the notch in the router.
2 days ago, while I was in the middle of a large job, the router didn't fire up anymore. I changed the cord, but it wasn't a cable breach. I couldn't wait for the (in warranty) repair of a week, so I bought another, albeit refurbished, one. It's always nice to have more than one router, and 4 bases are also nice. One in the router table, one with an offset base, one with a woodrat, etc.
Too bad I had to pay considerable more that $191, being in Canada.
Hey Leon speaking of routers, I seem to remember that you had purchased a Triton or were about to do so. If you have one how do you like it? Earl Creel
Yes I did get the Triton router. I ended up having to take the first back as mine had a problem with the switch shutting off when feeding stock through under a light to moderate load. Contacting Triton revieled that they had heard of this happening one other time. ;~) One other time? Anyway the exchange at Woodcraft went smoothly and the new uit has worked flawlessly. I am very happy with the router and so far, 6 months, it has worked as advertised. I am not one that likes routers that use a single wrench to loosen and tighten the collet but in this case with the bit being accesed above the router table the single wrench method works fine. The router table holds the router for me. Not having to work under the table and or remove the router from the table is a BIG plus. Fine tuning depth works great and rapid depth adjustment works great. I just finished doing some raised panel doors out of red oak and the router set on the second lowest speed setting never showed any sign of struggle although I made 4 passes. In fact I do not recall the motor sound changing between free spinning and working so I suppose the speed controll works well.
My switch broke also. When I posted about it, a bunch of people said theirs had also. Apparently it is Bosch's weak point. I stuck mine in a table with it's own switch, and it has been fine ever since. The replacement is okay, but I use a handheld so rarely that it hasn't had much of a test.
it doesn't matter what the model number is, don't ever buy a craftsman router.
- louder than anything else - bits _will_ slip, bet on it - reliability is iffy - every add on you might want doesn't fit anything else (unlike, say, PC routers)
Yup, all it takes is a relaxed specification. Bronze bushings vs roller bearings. Hardening? What's that? Nylon gears (or worse stamped gears) instead of machined gears. Fewer armature plates and windings - can save lots of money here - brushes wear out quicker and the motor is not as smooth running but what the heck.
Lots of ways to make it cheaper. The really tough thing is to make it better.
We all vote with our buck (pound for Andy) and, in the end, the companies that survive will be those who get our vote. The question is - do you want to have good quality tools in the future? If so you had better start voting for them now.
Thanks Leon, a Triton may show up under the Christmas tree for me. If one does arrive I will probably try to mount it in my existing router table. Am thinking I will get an Rousseau table insert or similar to mount it. What kind of an insert do you have if any? Earl Creel
Yes. Extremely high _production_ quality of a very poor specification. You should see the factory - it's probably gorgeous.
Modern "rubbish tools" are some of the best-made engineering ever produced. If they were made to the machining standards of a WW2 Rolls-Royce Merlin, they'd simply fall apart. There was a time when things were well designed, cost was ignored, and hand-fitting to assemble them was accepted (just look at the process for fitting the reduction gears on a Merlin - the shaft was torqued to simulate load, and only then were the bolt holes reamed by hand). These days they have to emerge from the machine and practically fall together themselves - no time for careful assembly or fitting.
So if that shaft is loose, it's not loose because it's mis-drilled, it's sloppy because someone timed how long it took to assemble it when it fitted correctly, and shaved 5 seconds off the assembler's time by making it a slack fit instead.
Chrome plate used to be thick because the thickness couldn't be controlled on corners and the easiest solution was to over-plate to compensate. Now a shaped anode can control the thickness on edges and corners to be adequate, so the rest of it can be thinned out.
I have a Bench Dog set up, the whole 9 yards. I use the Bench Dog plate that is the brown resin type, about 3/8" thick IIRC. Extremely rigid but easy to drill. Prior to that I had my older large Bosch hanging from the clear plastic plate. There are grooves worn in that plate. IIRC the one I am using now is suppose to be much tougher. For certain it is more rigid. I got that plate off of a close out table for $9.99 at WoodCraft. It was predrilled for various specific routers but not the Triton. I am however pretty good at drilling holes where they need to be. LOL
If you can get past the Ugly factor you should be happy with the Triton. It seems to have all the features you could want including an edge guide that appears to be well thought out although I have not used it yet.
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