Router Mill I built one

[Nicholas Lingg]

207528207527207526

[Bruce Page]

How cool is that! I look forward to seeing your first piece off of it!

[Trent Shirley]

Is this considered a mill or a lathe? I remember someone else's project (here (http://www.routerforums.com/table-mounted-routing/22980-my-home-made-router-milling-machine.html)) for a router mill that is more like a manually operated milling machine.
Both of these would be enormously useful but I doubt I will ever get that much free time.

Nice job.

[Ryan Hellmer]

That looks pretty sweet. I saw the plans in shopnotes and think its great. I bought a legacy, but I'm pretty sure this thing will do about everything mine will.

Ryan

[Neil Brooks]

I saw that plan, too, and thought "It takes a true stud to build one of these."

Nicholas ? You, Sir, are a true stud.

Enjoy it ! Looks beautiful !!

[Larry Frank]

I am very impressed and will wait to see some of the things that you make with it.

Congratulations

[Dave Mura]

Wow that's impressive!!
http://chdsolutions.com/img/11d867796d85db8cad5280ac44cec7c1.jpghttp://chdsolutions.com/img/a57d48399922b03419153a9760c5ce53.jpghttp://chdsolutions.com/img/beda24c1e1b46055dff2c39c98fd6fc1.jpg

[Mike Wilkins]

Good morning neighbor. That is a cool looking machine. I viewed a similar machine on the Laguna Tools website, but the Laguna machine was motor driven, computerized and cost a bucket load of money.
Very ingenious.

[Dave Lehnert]

here is a video of the mill.


http://www.shopnotes.com/issues/115/videos/router-milling-machine-video/

Link to a Sawmill Creek thread from January.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/archive/index.php/t-156380.html?

[Nicholas Lingg]

Aaron - Your email bounced send me another one and I'll try again

[Jerome Hanby]

It's easy to see how you could use this beasty to crank out dowels. I wonder if you could work out a set of gears to move the router equipped with a 90 degree V bit to cut 2 tpi threads for vise screws?

[Dennis Lopeman]

OMG... i love you.

joking!! That is really neat!!! I was just watching this video on the "Router Boss" yesterday and wondered "How much does this cost?" and "can I make this myself?" -- apparently YOU can make this yourself. If you haven't seen it, do a google search on router boss and watch the video. You might get some ideas for upgrades!! www.chipsfly.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc was the site I saw it.

[Van Huskey]

Great job on the the Shop Notes build! I have always wanted to get an ornamental lathe but I am never in the right place at the right time. How has it worked for you? Have any pics of the results? Kudos!

[Will Blick]

Amazing build, thx for sharing!

I looked at the ornamental mills from Legacy. The common stuff such as table leg enhancements such as spirals are quite nice, but you can also buy them pretty cheap from many ready-made wood product suppliers. Other than the very unique and one-off architectural stuff, I did not find enough interesting uses of the machine. I really enjoy the helix's they produce, but other than candle holders, not very many practical applications I can think of...but pretty awesome to see wood expressed in such an artistic manner.

Often I see end products of the ornamental mill that make enhancements to wood projects, but often appear as "overkill"....meaning, the added enhancement is interesting, but overall, less appealing than traditional enhancements.

[Jerome Hanby]

For that particular mill, does anyone know how to calculate the gear ratios to get a desired turns per inch of the stock in relation to the router (picturing the router with a v bit and how far the point moves per rotation of the stock). I'd like to figure out if it's even possible to gear this thing so that it travels one inch per two revolutions of the stock.

[Nicholas Lingg]

The finest pitch with this set of gears is 1 5/8. Without doing the math., to get a pitch of 1/2" you well need a large gear or an extra set and probility an odd number of teeth. I can see making the screw but were do you get the tap?

[Jerome Hanby]

The finest pitch with this set of gears is 1 5/8. Without doing the math., to get a pitch of 1/2" you well need a large gear or an extra set and probility an odd number of teeth. I can see making the screw but were do you get the tap?

I figure still use the old way to make the tap. Wind a 1/2" strip of paper around a dowel that is the interior diameter of the screw (at the base of the threads), cut a saw kerf along the line where the windings meet. Cut a block with a face set the same angle as those kerfs. Mount a sheet of metal the right thickness to ride in those kerfs on the block and mount the whole mess in a box so that you can drive that dowel by cranking it through the box. Cut a mortise in the dowel to accept your v cutter and a wedge to hold it. Then take a light cut on your nut, back it out, adjust the cutter, and repeat until you get the depth of cut you need. I watched an episode of Saint Roy last night where he built a gizmo to make this process a little easier, but it was all the same steps, just easier to hold the nut and crank the shaft.

In a practical sense, it's probably not worth the effort to make that mill cut the screws, just build a Beall style router gizmo to handle it. But, that mill looks perfect for making the dowels and if it could double as the screw thread cutter... I don't suppose there is a material soft enough to route that would still be hard enough to make a tap for threading wooden nuts is there? Would be easier to hack a finished screw into a tap than building one of those kerf driven gizmos.

I've also wondered about about using a 90 degree v cutting milling bit and rigging some kind of mount with a set screw to hold the cutter. I bought some 60 degree bits several years ago with a though to trying to use them, but decided someone else's 90 degree threads made more sense. Those cutters are pretty cheap and using them until they were no longer sharp or broke then putting in a new one would be easier than grinding a cutter out of an old file. The cutters I bought were carbide, so I'm not sure how well they would stand up to the stress of being dragged round and round the inside of the wooden nut being cut. Maybe there are HSS versions that would be more suitable. I kind of wonder about the replacement cutters they make for threadboxes too. those are 60 degree cutters (at tleast the ones that Woodcraft sells are 60 degrees). I wonder if they could be used (and if there are 90 degree v versions out there someplace)?

One more thing I've wondered about. I've seen taps that used four dowels with the ends shaped to fit down in the threads to drive a threaded shaft instead of those metal plates riding in kerfs. The dowels stick out into a circular opening and engage the screw. If that would be sturdy enough to work with big threads (like 3" diameter) that would make a tap easier to make and would make it automatically match the screw. Of course getting those dowels positioned properly might be a pain in the neck...

[Randy Dutkiewicz]

Now THAT'S impressive! Great job Nicholas - can't wait to see what you crank out on that mill!!!

Randy