Rethinking the Makita RTO700c Lowrider Base

That’s just what I do. I do still have my vac hose installed. I wear a mask usually and I prefer having the garage door open. I also don’t mill mdf (almost never). I don’t have many issues with it, but it is also not my day job.

I haven’t upgraded to the lr v2 yet. I may never if I wait another year or so, maybe a v3 will happen first.

Everyone needs to make their own decisions related to dust and their health. I did not mean to discount that. I also didn’t mean to make it sound like it isn’t worth while. The machine’s number one goal should be making parts (or else why have it? It would be a lot safer without it). But humans are worth a lot more than the machine. Obviously.

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I’m with you there, and am trying not to preach about this either, although sometimes it’s a pretty fine line I’m treading. There are plenty of other places where one can go for that.

At the same time I AM interested in quantifying the results - just because something looks like it should work doesn’t mean that it does.

It’s fascinating to me that for a very few dollars worth of filament I can draw something one day and be experimenting with it the next - what an amazing time it is to be alive.

Some day when I run out of projects I’ll bore your collective socks off with tables and graphs, or maybe I won’t! It would be nice to be in a position to make a positive contribution to V3, but that of course hinges on me getting V2 running! :smiley:

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I am going to follow this topic for sure. But I do wonder, would the printed part be strong enoug to hold the spindle safely? I mean, there is a reason the stock version is made out of metal?

If it is just the vacuum part you are looking after, maybe you should try to reprint and fit the original vacuum inlet from Makita/Katsu first? Jus to see if that makes any difference as that´s the original part.

The metal base does give it a bit of heft, and it’s designed to hang all manner of accessories off, but at the same time there is a plastic alternative available stock and just about every other trim router of this size has a clear plastic base, I guess it’s partly so that we’ll pay (in my case) $200.00 more than for the knock-off which would do almost the same job.

The base in the above design does need a bit of refinement structurally, but I I don’t have any doubt that it will be more than fine for the job.

Sadly for me, I have many other projects in line in front of this one, as well as a bit of travel that beckons, but I will post updates as the drawing is refined. I am particularly interested in the tramming adjustment problem - can I design a simple screw height adjuster that works reliably from above?

I’d love to see any suggestions.

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I had the same experience with my MPCNC with the Makita’s cooling fan blowing the dust around, I eventually made a baffle to deflect it which fitted in conjunction with the Dust extractor.

The deflector was not my design I hasten to add, was from Thingiverse , I only did the nozzle etc.

I for one would be interested to see some development in this area of the Lowrider as I agree, having made the base for the Makita I did have concerns. I have not fired my low rider up yet due to lack of space and opportunity. So many projects, so little time. :grinning:

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I truly understand - and it’s easier for me to continue with the theoretical development that to devote time to actually using the LR seriously at the moment.

The deflector you have used works in the same way as the one I am proposing and to my currently modified LR base, so that gives me hope!

It might be possible to deflect all or some of the cooling air stream onto the tip - a world of insane experimentation awaits!

If you missed it - here’s my current base:

true, but I imagine that a molded ABS is much stronger then a 3d printed one?

I think the best approach for this experiment is to make some different solutions, and do an exact test run for each of them. At the end of the job check tho amount dust collected…

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Dust collected is difficult without proper lab conditions - I have weighed dust and filters in the past, but to get accurate results you need a lot of it - just moving a HEPA filter is enough to lose some of the fine dust. BUT I will probably give it a go at some point.

I am more interested in the amount of free dust in the air - which I can measure crudely with a cheap particulate “air quality monitor” - it’s no scientific degree of accuracy, but it should at least enable “good, better, best” sort of ranking.

Luckily for me, my machine is a genuine luxury toy rather than a tool that’s critical to production - and until I get up to speed with it mucking around like this just adds to the joy of the build. If it turns out to be as indispensable as the 3d printer though - all bets are off!

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Love the experiments here! In terms of air quality measurements I’ve had great results with an IKEA air quality sensor and made this modification to it to send the current particle count reading to my Home Assistant. Now I can not only graph the air quality over time, but also can turn on/off my air filter automatically. It’s very sensitive and triggers within a minute of using my sander or router.

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That’s brilliant - I haven’t the faintest idea how to get data into a graphic form so I make do with hourly readings or three hourly ones or overnight ones depending on what I’m logging.

This is a bit like mine - well it looks exactly the same except that I’m fairly sure this one has some sort of PC interface and mine doesn’t, It’s “good enough” for our purposes I think, as is the Ikea one!

Right - we’re mostly interested in relative performance rather than absolute accuracy of measurements.

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just an fyi
I was doing a test cut this morning, and I noticed that roughly 60-70% of the dust goes in a certain direction. As I do not have a dust collection in place just yet it doesn´t matter.
But it does if you want to redesign the base. In that case you´d need to figure out where most dust particles fly to, and make sure the vacuum hose opening is connected there.

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There’s a bit of a challenge in that, that I am not up to taking on! The dust and chips are always going to be thrown off the cutting face, but the cutting face can be on any side of the bit if you think about it.

That means the pickup can at any given time be on the wrong or right side or somewhere in between. Stock router bases (which are designed for a different task) often have a little “keyhole” - the Makita does, to redirect air either into the above table vacuum or away from the work piece - they have the advantage that a router is (mostly) held in a particular position relative to the cut, ie with the cutout away from the user.

In my musings of late, I have been wondering if we can assist this by creating a small cone on the exhaust side which will catch some of the exhaust aimed at the cutter. There is a risk of course that this will simply help to create even more airborne dust.

I’ve also half completed the design of a new part to open up the “keyhole” on my base, which I have plugged in its current configuration.

All this is conjecture on my part - I simply won’t have time to cut anything until sime time in the new year, but please keep the ideas coming.

yes, that´s true. I had the same opinion although I really noticed that a larger part of dust went in 1 direction. Maybe it was just luck. Time will tell when I do some more milling.

thumbs up!

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So, I was planning on adding a dust shoe to my build, to assist the vacuum cleaner.

But doing 3 cuts today made me realize that’s not a desired option.
I mean, my bit was like 2,5cm long, and the wood 1,8 thick, and the table isn’t completely flat (±3mm difference), so there’s actually little to no place to add a vac shoe and keep working like that.

Watching the LR2 doing it’s thing, I realized that adding the vac mouth only to one side doesn’t make sense without a vac shoe. So if you’re still going to experiment, I’d make the suggestion to go from one large vac port to 4 smaller ones, each one positioned on one side of the router.

This way I believe you could keep the vacuum flow unchanged, but by tunneling and sucking away air on 4 places it might remove more dust.
Wdyt?

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I think that the whole base plate on the LR is something of a dust shoe.

If you are concerned about dust and less concerned with chips – ie: it’s your breathing that you’re worried about, and not keeping the workpiece clear of chips. then so long as there’s an inward flow from all sides of the plate, you’re going to get pretty good performance.

Rather than redesign the shoe, it’s probably better to work on getting better air flow through what we’ve got. In terms of effort/reward, this is probably the biggest gain.

That’s not to say that there aren’t gains to be had in the shoe design, but having the best dust shoe in the world isn’t going to help when there just isn’t enough airflow to suck up the dust and chips.

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In my case I am less concerned about the chips. That’s rather easily to clean.
But not the dust, that’s hard to clean. And for me somewhat of an issue as it covers my whole workspace with it.

I see you’re no fan of adding a dust shoe, what’s your opinion on 4 ports fitted around the Makita, instead of 1 off center?

In theory that’s a good idea I think, but I doubt that you’d get enough airflow to make a difference if you have a shopvac setup. To upgrade to a full 4" or 6" setup then smacks a bit of overkill in terms of scale but it’s what I have throughout my shed. There’s no doubt that dust is best controlled in an full enclosure - and chips can benefit from some airflow ONTO them, which is in conflict with the dust control thing.

I am way behind in many other things so will be at least a month before I can get back onto this - but keep the discussion happening! I’m THINKING! I’d love to have something to contribute to the next iteration, but based on actual data not guesses.

yeah, the theory makes sense, but would need to think through as there are many parameters.
It´s been long, I only remember something like the relation of airflow vs suction, and that a thinner tubes will pass less airflow, but larger ones don´t suck more dust.

Maybe I´ll experiment with it in the future (read; sometime in the summer holiday: )

It’s a velocity thing. You can’t get any more vacuum than 0 bar, but you can make air move stupid fast. Shop vacs are low volume high speed air, while most dust collection systems are high volume low speed. You can do high volume high speed, but they’re expensive and really loud. Another thing to consider is the size of the plate. It’s not hard to suck the whole plate down onto the work piece.

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