Sunday, August 29, 2010

Happiness and one question.

I have pretty good reason to be happy:) Now I have this very nice drill/mill system:

I'm sooo glad Denis bought me it, also there's a compound table, precision vise and drill/mill unit. At the store I had to choose between precision vise and clamps, so I've chosen the first one. Denis made the clamps out of the oak:



Aaand another jig, which can also be used as a clamp:

Now to the problem, we got this jig for routing with the compound table:
Pretty cool, I thought, because I had some kind of Dremel routing table before and I didn't really liked it. I thought that this jig would allow me to work with small size parts, but I was wrong. I can't make the router go lower than these plywood parts. I could cut them, but the metallic part in the middle would be as tall. Karin, George, anyone, please, is there any way to work it out? The jig Denis built is very good, but I'd still like to try this one too. I could take the metallic part away, but why is this Proxxon jig was made so large? 

2 comments:

Karin Corbin said...

You will need to make a different wood addition to the back fence. It is very important to have zero clearance around your bits. It will means you need to create a stepped back fence that allows the machine to come down to its bottom reach and fence wood to come up around the length of the bits you are going to use. If you have any big gaps around the bit the pieces you are routing will get caught at the edge of the gap. You could get hurt and most assuredly you will not get a good cut as the material is not being properly guided.

Build a riser table for the x-y table to lift your work higher. Along the sides of the riser base (to the left and the right)put on an L shaped aluminum bracket with holes for the bolts to hold it down to the x-y table. Make sure that bracket is always going to be clear of being hit by the router bit.

I can create some sketches for the ideas and send them to you in email. To reach my email use my name with no spaces and send it to gmail dot com

Victoria said...

Karin, thank you for the great tip with the riser table! I got the idea, which is very clever. Also,I'll take those plywood parts away and make my own.I'll sure post the update soon. Thank you again!