I was disappointed when I had a free evening in Detroit. I drove into canada and visited a local hardware store. No metric anything. It was a lot closer to detroit than anything else in Canada. So I’m not surprised. I ordered a metric tape on amazon the next day.
Finally got the strut plates cut and fitted. Added some extra holes for running wires and lights in the future:
Finished routing the dust collection hose and wires:
I also used the router to counter bore holes in the spoil board and chucked up a 1/8” drill bit to drill pilot holes for the spoilboard hold down bolts. Added M6 threaded inserts to the tabletop and then used nylon bolts to hold down the spoilboard and make it replaceable when needed:
This is an awesome looking portable build! Bravo!
Congrats on the crown!
How tram is tram enough? I’m getting about 0.15mm of gap on the left side when using 101.6mm (4") tramming bar. I think that’s good enough? I want to be able to surface cleanly with my 1" surfacing cutter
Sounds OK to me. ?
You can do it. Just be careful to have a shallow depth of cut and watch your feeds and speeds as a 1" surfacing cutter is big, and can overheat a router if you bite too deep. I burned a Makita router up while trying to resurface a spoil board.
Is there a goal for how tram the router needs to be? I know the larger the bit, the more it’ll show error
I have always had pretty good luck / success with my builds having the router be decently trammed right of the gate, so I’ve not done the whole checking and shimming for tram thing, so I don’t know the answer on that. I think that getting perfect tramming matters more for pockets cut with an endmill (having a smooth floor on the carving) than it does for spoil board, but it’s a bit subjective. I’m personally ranging somewhere between a rabid perfectionist and could not care less, depending on the situation.
I can see a minor stepdown with my 16mm endmill when flattening and feel a minor bump, but for pockets in all of my boxes and pencil cases with a 6mm endmill, you can‘t really see it.
Makes sense that the bigger a bit’s footprint the more exaggerated and apparent any lack of tram will be. A big surfacing bit would highlight a lack of tram. I don’t know how bad it would have to be for that effect on the spoil board to make it actually unusable. I’d think it would have to be pretty bad. ?