Stupid crazy router idea?

[tillius]

I've got this old crapsman and was thinking... I found a nice 5 HP motor, pulleys, belts, etc, and I have a sacrifical router... so maybe I'd hook it all together with the collet from the router and make myself a 5 HP router table with tilt and height adjustment on the front/side of the router table (crapsman TS shell).

Has anyone seen anything similar? Is it a nutzo idea (like communism/liberism)?

Tillman

[Unisaw A100]

Tillman

Yes. An over arm router uses the same principles.

Not nutzo just not thought through. The high RPMs (20,000ish) are generated by the router. By gutting the router and hooking up the five horse all you've done is create a Rube Goldberg router that at best runs at a speed dictated by the motor and pulley arrangement. 'Sides, the interior bits and pieces of the router would be something of a task to make mate up with the pulley and in the end you'd probably have something that would disintegrate right about the time it got up to speed.

In other words, a huge wastage of time.

UA100

[Lowell Holmes]

They make these things commercially, they are called Shapers. :-)

[Hitch]

tillman [e-mail] (tillius) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

You just want to build a shaper. It's a good concept, but unfortunately, the Craftsman router was only built to take much lower power than your 5 hp motor. I'm guessing that the Craftsman was a 1.5 hp model, that is, 1.5

*Sears* horsepower, which, as we all know, is 10 times (min.) real horsepower. If you put 5 hp on that little router spindle and bearing, it will rout so easily you'll be tempted to put bigger and bigger bits on it, and push the work through faster and faster, and eventually you'll make it blow up. Kind of like putting a dragster motor in your Corolla. Step on the gas easy and you'll go fine. Step a little harder and the frame twists.

Try researching shaper plans. I'm positive I've seen plans for a homebuilt shaper.