A while ago I came across a video of someone using a brushless/cordless dewalt router in a gantry CNC, with one of those Ali-Express ‘Power your tool from the mains not the battery’ PSUs. Not sure if it was linked here or reddit or just a youtube recommendation.
I piqued my curiosity a bit, and I spent a bit of time looking at various things on Amazon, when I came across these two things:
and
(speciffically the 1kw version as it’s more PSU-like).
Why are they interesting? Well firstly, the router has a longer body than the usual makita clones, even the brushless ones:
In fact, with a shim to fit the regular clamp letting you get a little bit of depthe back fromt he chamfered area, it is only about a mm shy of being the right length:
(It even fits some of my double-thick clamps I adapted to fit the standard uprights)
Now i’ve not seen a brushless (or brushed in fact) makita-clone / budget router with a body comparable to the dewalts before, and the fact it’s brushless is particularly interesting as I want to try out a brushless router as a stepping stone to a big spindle.
The second interesting thing is the router + PSU together came in under a hundred pounds (so likely under a hundred dollars given the way tool prices are) - which sits somewhere between cheap brushed router and expensive spindle territory.
The current downside is i’m using a makita to dewalt adaptor and the power cord is only a metre or so:
But I think I can adapt the adaptor into a 2-3m extension. Hopefully I can test it in the not too distant future!