If you can somewhere, go check out the Milwaukee 5625-20 three and a half horsepower unit.
This is truly a great router and ideal for under a table. Electronic variable speed, which keeps the RPM's at the speed you initially set, soft start, and a really nice above-the-table height adjustment feature. Comes with both collets and 2 sub-bases...one eith the PC size hole for the PC system of bushings.
In my (now-soon-to-be-gone) job at a WWW store, I've gotten to use a bunch of routers in my demos for customers and woodworking classes I was teaching. This includes all the PC's, Triton, Makita, DeWalt, Bosch and Milwaukee's. Since the darn stores are all going out of business and I won't have the in-store shop to work in anymore, I found myself wanting to purchase a new router for my own shop,
The 3 1/2 horse Milwaukee was my head and shoulders above the rest choice.
But ANY of the other routers mentioned by the other posters will do the job. IMHO, it just comes down to which one YOU like the feel of the best.
That was written years ago. Since then several routers have come on the market that were _designed_ to be used under a table - including two Milwaukee models, the PC 890 series and the Triton.
Thanks for the link! I found it very informative and it covered most of my questions. Unfortunately, the PC 895PK is now $229.00 at Amazon, still with free shipping - but still apparently a bargain.
I am now attempting to force my fingers away from the ORDER button...
I have some accessories (i.e.- template & edge guides) for the 690 series that I adapted for use to my current router - good to know I could still use them as well.
I just hope the WoodShopDemos site doesn't turn out to be a disguised mouthpiece for PC public relations...
Oh, hell - I wasn't watching, and my finger pressed the button. It has been ordered. ;-)
Yea, I've gotta watch that miscreant finger - I found it browsing the pages of 14" bandsaws just a moment ago... Fortunately, I caught it in time to avoid intense personal rejection from SWMBO.
Sorry I disagree. My router table has had both a fixed base and plunge router in it, and the plunge router is superior.
Suppose you have to route a 3/4" deep dado in 16 pieces of wood. The depth is critial, and you have to make multiple passes to do it.
You finish the job, and realize to your horror that you only did 15 of the
16 pieces. (I have been here with both a fixed base router and a plunge router mounted in the table. )
-- With a fixed base router, you have to make several passes, and measure the depth of cut very carefully on the last one to make sure it's the same depth.
-- With a plunge router, what the h*ll. The max depth is already set. Drop the router down in the table to a good depth for the first cut, lock the knob, and route the piece. Raise the height a bit, lock the knob, and route again. Continue until you can't raise the router anymore because it's at max. The depth of cut is EXACTLY the same as all the other pieces you cut.
For the kind of mistakes I make I can't image anything better in a router table than a plunge router -- an arbitrary number of cuts in an arbitrary number of pieces of wood to achieve the same depth of cut.
Besides that, the plunge router in a router table is easily made into a pulley / rope / foot device that can plunge into a piece of wood heald tightly against the fence. Only once have I tried to "Carefully lower the piece of wood into the spinning router blade." The wood jumped all over the place and I came close to bleeding all over the nice clean router table, and leaving one or two of my fingers on the table. Scared the snot out of me and I didn't spin the router again for over a month.
Unless someone holds a gun to my head, and can PROVE that it's loaded I have no intention of EVER lowering a piece of wood onto a spinning router bit again as long as I live. It's so trivial to hold the wood against the fence, press down on a stick with my foot, and have the router bit SAFELY plunge into the wood. ;-) Hold the wood, press with the foot, move the wood, release the foot, lift the wood, TRIVIAL and SAFE!
No, IMHO, plunge routers are MADE for use in router tables. Flog me, beat me, burn me, boil me, drown me, I won't recant. Hahahahahaha.....
Well, I ran to my local distributor and checked out the Triton when it first came out. Beside it was a stack of returns - and that kind of put me off. Apparently they had a problem with the electronic speed controller PCB, but I hear they corrected it, and I don't know if this is still a problem. Combined with that experience, the custom accessories, and the (then) $350 price tag...
By the same token, being from Australia, it would be a natural for mounting down-under a router table... ;-)
Now if they could just get their toilets to flush in the proper direction,...
Yes, I considered it, but the price and weight kind of put me off. I do have a couple of Milwaukee tools, and they are all fine - unlike the B&D and Skil crap I have been given (and returned) over the years...
Just when I get totally fed up with Delta/PC quality and service and start shopping elsewhere, they will do something to make up for it. Hopefully the PC890 is such an effort, and it better be Made In U.S.A.
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