I've been pondering a router table for some time as I can imagine it
could be useful for some jobs that are hard to do 'freehand'. I should
probably build one myself but have never found the time.
I see Aldi have one for under 30 squids on Sunday, but wonder if it's
worth a punt or a waste of 30 quid that could do toward a decent one:
Has anyone bought one of these and found it good/bad?
I bought one for my son last time it reached the remainder bin. I can't
remember how much I paid.
He assembled it and has used it quite a bit making radiator covers and
other bits and pieces, and has said to me that it is good, but some of
the bolts were made of cheese, and he had to replace them.
I've helped feed some long pieces of wood through and it seemed to me to
work well, but I am no expert.
Some way from me unfortunately, but thanks for the offer Tim.
Does the fact you'd like to dispose of it mean it's no use or that you
have moved on to greater things in that area?
If it's the same as mine then it has plastic guides that are bit floppy
making repeatability a bit of an issue but I found it ok for a bit of
rough use, certainly better than nothing and ok for the price.
Points to watch:
Plenty of clearance on the base fixings & fish plates so you need to
crank em up to make the whole thing rigid.
There is a 13A extension socket on the front for the router that goes
through an emergency stop button. On mine it does not pass the earth so
plugging any earthed (class 1) equipment in would be unsafe. Not sure if
anyone makes class 1 power tools these days but it could be an issue if
you plug in an extension to power off router, shop vac and anything else
at the same time. I was amazed it passed electrical regs.
Not the hard way :-)
Can't really remember but suspect it was labelled class 2 which aroused
my curiosity as being a glorified extension lead it should have a
through earth so in my mind couldn't be class 2<?>. Removed plug top and
found 2 core cable.
Didn't involve trading standards but prob should have.
On Friday, September 6, 2013 11:19:42 PM UTC+1, GMM wrote:
I bought one years ago and, at the price, it's very good for light work. B
it of time and faffing needed to set it up and make sure all is plumb but a
fter that not a bad little workhorse. Best if you've got a router you can
leave in it rather than constantly taking in and out.
Indeed. I have an old router that has an alignment problem between the
spindle and the base plate (off by a few mm, so a variable offset) that
there doesn't seem to be any way to adjust, so not much use for
following a guide bush but potentially fine when mounted in a table.
I bought one last time, along with their cheap plunge router so I could
leave it on full-time. Maybe I've assembled it wrong but I find it very
awkward getting the plunge locking lever to latch, as it fouls the
underside of the table. Also you have to set the bits high into the
collet to get enough depth on the cut, which isn't ideal.
The fence isn't very rigid or square to the base either.
I bought one a while ago - along with a cheap Aldi router which I use
with it, and leave permanently attached.
I seem to remember having to do a bit of re-engineering to make it work
to my satisfaction. Whilst the main table is an aluminium casting with a
machined face, the fences etc. are plastic, and I think I had to file
off some bits of flashing to make them sit square.
Also, I changed the clamping arrangements for the fence and central
feather board. As supplied, these bolts come up from underneath the
table, with their heads located in hex sockets on the underside, and
with wing nuts on top. This made adjustment difficult, because the bolts
didn't stay exactly upright when the fence was moved. It also meant that
if you wanted to remove the central feather board altogether to
accommodate a wider work-piece, you couldn't because the router clamps
on the underside covered the bolt-heads and prevented the bolts from
being removed. In both cases, I glued captive nuts into the hex sockets,
and used bolts going down from the top instead of up from the bottom.
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