I just spent $200 plus tax
on one of these rigid routers that comes with a fixed base,
and the plunge base, and a bunch of other accessories.
And I thought I'd do a short review on it.
I bought, yet another router, because I
put a big router back in my Pantorouter.
And now I needed another big router to put back in
my tilting router lift. And at the Home Depot,
this was the only one with a cylindrical body
and variable speed, that they had so.
I bought this one.
The reason I'm doing a review is there is a few things
about this router that I actually really like.
But there's also one "Gotcha".
The router body only has one protrusion
from the cylindrical, which is this alignment pin here.
And it has an indent here.
The pin keeps it aligned when it goes in here.
And this indent is for this part here to lock it
approximately at the right level.
Though it doesn't really hold that well.
The idea is to get it in the right
position before you lock this
and that really holds it in place.
This little clamping thing needed a bit of adjustment
to get it to get the right kind of hold.
Like most plunge routers,
the base has a bit of play.
So, I would never use the plunge action on this
for a homemade machine of mine.
But, this isn't any worse than other routers I've seen.
I think you'd have to go to a really expensive one
to get no play in here.
What's really cool about this router is the fixed base.
It too has a little clamp thing here for
catching in here, and this one catches much better.
And then there's an adjustment screw
for moving it up and down.
That seems to work pretty well.
And then the clamp here, this also needed adjustment.
But, what's really cool is it came with this
weird T-shaped piece of plastic.
I thought, what the heck is this for,
and I noticed there's a hex thing on the end here.
And then I noticed there's a hole in here.
So, the idea is if you mount this in a router table,
you can still adjust the height from above the table,
which is, I think, a very cool feature.
Because that gives you a lot of the advantages of a router lift,
without having to buy a router lift, so
very cool design here.
You do have to remember to lock it though
because this part in here
really doesn't hold the router well enough.
So, every time you adjust it you need to unlock
and then re-lock.
This router also came with this funny pin here,
which is a quarter here and a half inch here,
and this weird plastic cone.
And I figured these are for aligning
and indeed the manual confirms, so
you put this in here and then you put this shaft
inside the collet. And then you can use the
cone to line up this part.
And this thing with the screws loose,
this actually has quite a lot of play to it.
So, if we push this down, we can now tighten the screws,
and make sure
that this plastic base is exactly concentric
with the shaft of the router.
For bit changes, I suppose you could just take
the router out of the base
and change bits that way.
Or, if you want to leave it mounted
in a router table thing,
it comes down far enough
that between the spindle lock
and the collet, you can actually get
at it up here to tighten and loosen bits.
So, that should work fairly well.
It also comes with this dust port thingy
that goes on here.
And it looks like it should be fairly effective.
On the other side there is a plastic cover,
which of course makes it very
difficult to get at it with a wrench.
But, if you just squeeze it, it comes off like that.
So, actually I think this is a very good design.
But the big question really is
how well does this motor work,
So, let's try that out next.
So, just holding it in my hand
and making adjustments to the speed control,
I can tell that this router responds very crisply.
Much more crisply than this
cheap Mastercraft router from Canadian Tire.
And, also I'm feeling much less vibration on this one
even at full speed, compared to this one.
So, that's a very good sign for this one here.
But, here we get to the part that's
really boneheaded about this one.
When I looked at it in the store,
I just sort of held my hand
up to it, like that, and I know from here to here
is 8 inches. And so, I'm pretty confident
this is about 3 1/2 inches.
And if you're gonna make it 3 1/2 inches,
you don't want to make it almost 3 1/2 inches,
you want to make it 3 1/2 inches so it fits in
router lifts and stuff like that.
These all take 3 1/2 inch routers.
But, when I got it home, I put my calipers on it,
and just to check it, and it lined up an eighth mark
but it's at 3 5/8th or 92 millimeters,
instead of 89 millimeters or 3 1/2 inches.
And, I was first just like that can't be.
That's just stupid.
But, I measured it again, and
if we take the base that fits onto this one,
and try that with a standard 3 1/2 inch router,
there is quite a lot of play, so
this router really is an incompatible size
with most router lifts that are out there.
So, it was kind of ironic that I actually bought this router
to use in my router lift.
My tilting router lift.
So, I thought, "Well, let's see if maybe I should make
cut these arches out a little bit more
because the hose clamps that hold the router
can be adjusted." But I thought I'd just
try and fit it in there anyways.
The slightly larger router body
doesn't exactly match this curvature so it's pressing
more against the corners, here.
But, that should hold it fairly rigidly in place.
Now if I put the cover plate on there,
you can tell the router is not quite centered.
But, I think it's close enough that I'll just
leave it like that rather than cutting these out and
then making it incompatible with other routers.
I've got a precision ground 1/2 inch steel shaft
that I sometimes use for checking alignment.
I wanted to check how square this is and the
first thing I always do is I twist it a bit just to make sure
it's not wobbling on the end.
And what's impressing me here is
I can hardly see this wobble, so if I put a box next to it
it's easier to see by the eye and the wobble on here is
really very minimal.
But, what I actually wanted to check was
whether this is going to be vertical here
with a different size router.
And it turns out if I touch on the top here,
I've got a good 3 millimeters
worth of gap on the bottom, here.
So, this is not on entirely vertical
and I don't blame the router. It's my tilting router lift
that's not that precise.
So, to bring the router into alignment, the top it
needs to move this way.
And I've just loosened up this hose clamp
and I've got a couple of plastic shims
from a 2-liter pop bottle, and I'm just gonna
put them in here to force the router this side
this way a little bit.
And now tightening up the hose clamp again.
So, I've still got a teeny, tiny bit of gap here
but I'll call that close enough.
And in this direction,
I've got a teeny, tiny gap at the top
but close enough.
So, whenever I use this large bit
with the Mastercraft router, I got a lot of vibration.
So, let's try it with this router, here.
So, that was 1 full depth cut
and that worked surprisingly well
The speed regulation is really good.
The router didn't slow down at all.
And even in this birch here,
just a clean cut so,
I'm actually very pleased with this router.
That said, there is one final dislike for this router,
which is that for 1/4 inch bits, it comes with this
collet adapter whereas my other routers
come with a whole separate collet.
I think I'd very much prefer a separate collet
to the adapter.
So, overall I quite like this router.
In fact, it's the best router I've got so far.
But then again, I mostly buy cheap stuff.
The only problem with it is, if you're trying to
put it in a peripheral router lift, it probably won't fit
because the boneheaded non-standard size.
But, I pay for my own power tools, so...
I can say what I want.