hello friends of maslow forum, my machine is now almost calibrated and but now im having trouble with the z axis, i know i should have purchased a ridgid router, soon i will do it, but for the time being ill work with an enertwist compact router, i attached the motor horizontally so it can move the bearing that these compact ruouters use, and it works, it moves up and down, when its going to make the marks in the final calibration step, my z axis moves up the router but stays raised there while the machine moves to make the patterns it does not move down so it can start cutting, i want to know if that step of raising the router bit before it starts cutting is normal, thats the only issue i have left now, is there a way i can remeasure the ratio of the router movement so it can work properly with my current router?
The ridged router’s z axis doesnt’ work that well either, so dont’ feel bad. there are many posts complaining about it.
yes you can control the pitch movement in ground control software. Your router is a Chinese copy of the Makita 701C and if I remember correct the pitch is around15mm. Just turn your knob one rotation and measure how much the router motor moves with a ruler. in ground control the default pitch is 3.17mm
It has a very course gear with a lot of play, you will want to make a z axis for it eventually.and you deffinetely want to put a bungee elastic rope over the top to the sled to minimize the play.
this linear rail plus the larger plate is what I’d recommend.
thanks for the links!
thank you metalmaslow thats a very good advice that i will try to implement in the next days to see if it solves the issue, i spent yesterday all the day looking for a logic solution for this, i will measure the pitch movement on the enertwist to see if it works better, and youre also right about the play this router has, obviously you have dealt with this issue, the strange thing is that i managed to make it go up and down relatively well
, but that raise of the bit in the start of the cut always ends with the router raised and not cutting, i will get back you you as soon as i implement your suggestions, thank you.