Trying to surface my spoil board it seems that my router got hot enough to melt and warp the tool brackets. I reprinted the clamps in PETG for the higher temperature resistance to avoid issues in the future.
Redoing my surfacing now and using an infrared temp gun the highest I am reading is about 120 (but temp gun doesn’t work all that great on the shiny router surface so thats the temp of the clamps). This seems like it would be flying too close to the sun for PLA. Is my router not cooling properly, I checked that the vents weren’t clogged and used compressed air for good measure. Anything else I should check? Should I get some little heat sinks to stick onto the router body for good measure, I have no clue if that would make any measurable difference.
How hard were you pushing it on the surfacting? What size bit, DOC? Did you level the beam when you set up your LR3? Did you level again before starting the surfacing? Was your Spoilboard way out of wack?
All of those things can play a big role in it. If your trying to swing a huge surfacing bit and going for a large depth of cut/step over then you can for sure get that router warm.
1-inch surfacing bit, doing .5 mm doc each layer until all my pencil marks are gone. I did check my Z leveling before starting.
My table was/is super out of whack (my fault for taking shortcuts when building the table). Along the x-axis the center of the board is higher than the edges, and my y:0 is higher than my y:max. Either way I am starting my surfacing z level from the highest point (x:center y:0) and then working down from there.
I did mis-type and I’m actually surfacing the board under my spoil board so that when I put my spoil board on it will be close to flat (hopefully saving myself time in the future when I have to replace the spoil board)
Sounds to me like you are doing everything correct. Well at least the way I would. Not sure how “correct” that is
Is your router new? Or older and full of dust maybe? Could be a number of things. Keep an eye on it and hopefully it doesn’t become a permanent problem.
If you’re slowing the router down because you’re swinging a big bit, you’re also slowing down the fan that tries to keep the router cool.
When researching an after-market PID speed control years ago, they recommended adding supplemental fans to the router when running it slow to make sure enough cooling air made it through.
I was thinking about adding a separate cooling fan but don’t really want to do the cable management for that right now, maybe if/when I upgrade to LR4 I’ll just plan that into the rebuild.
This might be the reply that actually encourages me to figure out proper feeds and speeds because killing a router sounds like a quick way to ruin a day .
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