I have always been at the limit of the depth of cut with the Makita router since the stock mount does not allow the spindle nut to protrude out the bottom (probably for safety). This means that any dust skirt added to the bottom of the 611 plate would reduce the available depth of cut unless I went to a long cutting bit. I just so happened to stumble across this spindle mount, which comes with 90 degree brackets and holes in the side, this allows it to be flush mounted to a surface (most of these are only rear mounted that i’ve seen for the Xcarve style machine).
I had to make the 611 plate slightly wider, the router now protrudes much lower allowing enough room to add a skirt. It is very rigid, the router can still be removed (had to cut down an allen key for clearance) but bit changes are now easy to do with the router installed.
Added some magnets to the aluminum plate using epoxy and then added magnets into the dust skirt as well, the skirt is now very solid but still easy to remove.
Downside is that I need to cut with a taller Z, eventually I might just raise up the wheel path so my spoil board is lower than where the wheels ride. I also assume I lose some accuracy but will be running some test to determine how much. I had very clean and tight results cutting the dust skirt so i’m not too worried about it at this time.
Soft neoprene dust skirt will be added with glue and staples to the perimeter.
Very cool. Does it seem rigid? I would hope that it will limit twist enough to not chatter.
I can not tell anything useful from the images in that amazon listing. Why do they show it with a 3D printer behind it? Some of these photoshop product pages are ridiculous.
Yeah I’m not sure why they show a 3D Printer. I think they were trying to hit every industry that people are into these days. Yes it is very rigid, the combination of the aluminum plate and the wide stance of this mount makes it very solid. If can grab the router end and flex the stainless x tubes but see no relative movement in the router mount itself. The distance from the router clamp to the tip of the cutter is about the same as the stock one as it grabbed higher up. Re running a shitting calibration run shows -0.2mm in the Y and -0.4mm in the X without finish pass (need to confirm form old g-code but I think the file I had was from before adding finish passes)
Dust skirt installed. The neoprene is a little soft so it gets sucked inwards. I had to add a small reinforcement strip to the vac end so the fingers don’t get sucked in. Might have to upgrade some slightly stiffer material.
