Dual Purpose Router Table

[Capstone]

I was asked by a customer if I could add routing capabilities to my plasma table. He only to cut in 2D with a maximum thickness of 1/4" thick ABS plastic.

I have a PrecisionPlasma HD Gantry setup with C&CNC 620oz motors. I think this is adequate for the needs. Adding a small router and setting up a "box" for material seems easy enough, but I'd like to avoid pitfalls or definite non-starters if they are out there.

Has anyone made this modification with their table and if so what did you do or if not, how would you go about it if you were to?

The alternative is he buys a $1200 dedicated machine, but would rather save space in his shop and is willing to subsidize my capital expense to upgrade my machine for this capability which would in turn improve his business products.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

[KIDTech]

I have been going over this as well, add a router to my table or build another designated table. I understand not everyone has the space needed for this so it may not be a solution for everyone. I am planning on building another table for if one goes down we do not lose both avenues for business. These are just my thoughts on this, we will see how it works out. I look forward to seeing what others think on your issue.

[Larry83301]

If you're going to cut plastic make sure that you have a shroud around your router and an air supply pointed at your cutter. The shroud to suck away the chips and the air to keep the cutter cool enough to make chips and not just melt thru the plastic. Something like in the pictures would work with an air supply added.

shroud vacuum for router table 2.jpg

shroud vacuum for router table 1.jpg

Larry

[acourtjester]

I agree add a router to your table with a dust shoe
https://www.google.com/search?q=router+ ... 85Cyvvk49Q
I built a small router table for my daughter and added router mounts to my table and one table I sold. It is easy to add and only small changes to sheetcam to make the G-code for 2D type routing.
here is the dust shoe this is fixed just above the material being cut and has a shop vac attached via the black tube. The flexible one do not clean as well the router just moves up and down through the shoe. nothing left on the table.

dust shoe.jpg

[Larry83301]

That's a good idea! I hadn't thought of making the shoe separate from the router head.

Larry

[grindergary]

I have the HD gantry also but 48" wide table. Mine came with a mount for the router. As long as you don't force it it should be good. I have the same motors and C&cnc equipment.

Hope that helps

Gary

[Capstone]

Thanks for the replies and great advice everyone.

Follow-up question. What's recommended for a cutter given the parameters already mentioned? I get a lot of eBay results around "spindles" for CNC...These seem like overly complicated for my purposes. Are there alternatives that anyone can recommend? Would a Trim Router work or is there a specialized tool I'm not aware of that's preferred?

[Larry83301]

I run a Porter Cable 2.5hp Router with adjustable speed. I would use a 3 flute 1/4" cutter if it has an acceptable kerf width for your job, you could go down to 1/8" and still make one pass as long as you are blowing the chips out of the way. Just remember "a router with just air to cool the cutter cuts MUCH slower then Plasma arc" !

Larry

[Black Forest]

The table I am building will have two gantry's. One for plasma cutting and the other for routing and drilling. It will utilize driven nut ballscrews. The idea is to build it big enough to park one gantry out of the way while using the other. It will have downdraft fume extraction not a water table.

[acourtjester]

I use a sheet of MDF to mount the parts I want to cut/shape. Herre are some threaded inserts I put in the MDF so I can machine screws for hold downs.
Install them from the underside so the top is flat.
In sheetcam the 2 operations are "contour" to follow a line or cut a shape, and "pocket" to remove all inside a shape.
you can buy 1/8" bits on ebay and buy a machine collets from this company for most popular routers.
http://www.precisebits.com/gateways/Col ... oCtBbw_wcB

DSCN1078.jpg

sheetcam router.jpg

CNC plate marker (3).JPG

CNC plate marker (9).JPG

[steel 35]

Here is where I put the mount I have yesterday; talking to a friend about making 109 balaster replacement's. If the router I have fit it, I would be a little further along with this process!

[Capstone]

Thanks for the additional info. It seems that this topic might have considerable interest with others and it's great to have lots of input and shared experiences.

A buddy of mine have a Vertical CNC that's willing to custom make a holder out of aluminum to attach to my Velox "Z"

I also went out today and got the Makita compact router shown below. It's got a variable speed selector, which is nice. It's also pretty solid so I don't expect there to be any issues with shudder so long as I keep things slow. The biggest challenge now is the chip/dust removal system, which hopefully I can fashion after the setup suggested below. Thanks for the pics on that design!!

2015-07-23 17.22.25.jpg

2015-07-23 17.22.55.jpg

The clamping system Jester suggested using will definitely work nicely. And Thanks for the link for the bits!

[Capstone]

duplicate post

[Capstone]

In sheetcam the 2 operations are "contour" to follow a line or cut a shape, and "pocket" to remove all inside a shape.

sheetcam%20router.jpg

Are these tool sets standard with a licensed copy of SheetCAM or did you have to get add-ons?

I don't see those two options in my version...

SheetCAM.JPG

[grindergary]

I think you need to go into sheetcam and check mark for the mill or router. I don't have my computer with me so you will have to look in the settings.

HTH

Gary

[sodfarmer]

I have a router/plasma table and would recommend a vacuum hold down system. It's not expansive to build one and lets you walk away and do other things. I use a porter cable 3-1/4" router on mine and cut alot of 1" plastic with it. For bits I would recommend Onsrud bits, kind of like consumables, you get what you pay for. I have used these and have found them to be the best bar none. I have around $300 in my vacuum hold down system and it will hold anything I've throw @ it. Routing is a different animal than plasma cutting, once you figure what works with your machine it's pretty easy to program.

[acourtjester]

On the top menu bar select Tools then "new rotary tool" when the menu comes up you will see Mill/router change the name to router. That will create a tool in the tools section. You then can enter the spec for routing. go slow and not too deep until you see how things are going. The bit will get hot if you push it to hard. A variable speed is very handy having 23000 RPM is not needed for most work. There is a program called "art Carve" the is in module
form so you can add sections if you get really interested in doing different thing. But I gets you to the more complex carving if you want to do decorative things. Remember you start a Z 0.0 (start depth) and go down but SheetCam will do that when you tell depth of each layer, you enter in a 0.050" layer cut and it will go down 0.050". If you need to go more you just add layers by giving it the total depth (cut depth) over the side it will tell you how many layer/cuts it will take. The finish allowance is a finishing edge cut for clean up to the final dimension. The ramp angle is to sloop from one layer to the next. You can even program in tabs in the final layer so the parts does not come loose at the end of cutting they are very small and can be cut with a knife after cutting.

have fun
Tom

[Capstone]

So on SheetCAM, under Help on the top menu is a "Setup Wizard"

After selecting the preferred units of measurement you select the machine types, I had the "rotary milling" option unchecked. Pretty simple, but not necessarily obvious.

So now I can play around with the milling toolsets. Thanks again.

[acourtjester]

not necessarily obvious.

That is what I have found about all software packages. The person who wrote it understand completely but many other are scratching their head saying "what Where How "

[suttoncnc]

My machine ran as a router for 3 years before making it a dual operation router/plasma cutter. A few observations about my experience with over 1000 hours of production between the to ops:

1. Sheetcam works great for 2.5D routing and plasma cutting. BUT, for simplicity I have installed it on 2 computers. One installation is set up as a plasma cutting and the other installation is set up as a router. This makes switching things like tool sets, post processors, machine options etc just go away. I have the everything networked together so that file transfers are seamless.

2. Vacuum hold-down is not a must BUT I would not operate without it. Google ShopBot forums for central vacuum motor vacuum tables. This is what I did from the beginning. There are many that say this will not work but I have years of positive results from this setup and it works fantastic for what I do. Incorporating a plasma cutter AND a vac hold down could be tricky. Search my former post to see how I did it, I have 99% smoke removal during plasma with my side draft setup. Also, because the air flow runs parallel to my material the air serves to cool the metal and greatly reduce warpage on the thinner stuff.

3. Dust extraction. This is a little deceptive....its not that I just want my shop to stay clean when I am routing, proper dust extraction increases tool life because it helps to reduce recirculation of cut materials back into the tool path. As an earlier post stated, I always use a shop compressor air supply in addition to the dust collection hood when I am routing. The setup has a small tube of copper that blast air directly at the cutter and is located UNDER the dust hood. The dust collector and the air supply start with the spindle via relays. When I am profiling a deep trench the air blast helps to evacuate the cut materials out and get them into the air stream so that the vac can pick them up and remove them. I routinely cut aluminum sheet and plate up to 3/4" thick using this method.

4. Router vrs spindle. I started with a Bosch 1617EVS router, and I still am running the same router. I have rebuilt it a couple of times including the brushes, bearings, and upper housing. All these parts are cheap and readily available. I get about 200 hours of hard use out of it before I need to do anything to it. As already stated, I cut aluminum but in addition to this I regularly cut wood, industrial grade plastics, composites and various other materials. So although I have no experience with a true spindle, I have not found a reason to switch from a regular Home Depot/Lowes router. The one thing that I ABSOLUTELY DO RECOMMEND is a new collet for it. The factory Bosh collet has several thousandths of runout right out of the box. This collet set changed my entire operation: http://www.precisebits.com/products/equ ... ollets.asp This collet reduces tool vibration therefore tool life increased and cut smoothness also was remarkably better.

[Capstone]

Thanks Sutton. All great info. I've already called PrecisionBits and left a message to see if they have a collet set for the Makita RT0701CI just purchased for $100 from HomeDepot. It seems really well made.

The water table will definitely hamper some designs for a vacuum table, but I appreciate the suggestion about the Whole-House Vacuum idea. I just happen to already have one installed with an inlet in my garage just steps from the table, so I might run some tests.

Here's the first component I fabbed for the mounting system.

CMD Router MountPlate.jpg

I'm pretty happy with the cut quality as well on this 1/4in Mild Steel.

CMD .25 cut quality.jpg

Progress pics and updates as they happen will be added. Thanks again for the advice and insights.

[blackandtan]

I have the HD gantry also and I have not had any trouble using the router on it. I would love to use a vacuum table with it but having a water table would make that difficult, not enough room on mine below the gantry. I have both versions of sheetcam on my computer, I use the stable version for the plasma and the development version for the router. The only reason I do that is to keep the tool sets separate and keep from having to change post processors every time I turn around.

[steel 35]

Router is a phone call away! Now software is a big one. Vcarve pro; OR Autodesk fusion 360, anyone here using one or both with a preference?

[Capstone]

Router is a phone call away! Now software is a big one. Vcarve pro; OR Autodesk fusion 360, anyone here using one or both with a preference?

Agreed,

Fortunately, my first purpose is simply a 2D ABS plastic cutting project so I expect to use SheetCAM. I am curious about other cheap 3D CNC Programs (oxymoron statement I know)

[Capstone]

I got the Makita compact router shown below. It's got a variable speed selector, which is nice. It's also pretty solid so I don't expect there to be any issues with shudder so long as I keep things slow. The biggest challenge now is the chip/dust removal system, which hopefully I can fashion after the setup suggested below. Thanks for the pics on that design!!
The clamping system Jester suggested using will definitely work nicely. And Thanks for the link for the bits!

After talking with PrecisionBits, I was steered away from the Makita Router. I guess the factory collet is crap and PrecisionBits doesn't make a replacement setup, so I went with the Dewalt DWP611 instead. It's fairly widely used with CNC setups with hobbyists.

As for the chip removal, I ordered a dust kit from KentCNC. I was originally going to fab my own, but I'm on a schedule to complete some parts for a customer and didn't want to prototype endlessly.