Until last week I had never experienced bit slippage in a router. I was milling a pile of white oak into ship-lap boards on a job site using a 1 1/4” bearing guided 1/4” shaft router bit. Cut was 3/8 wide, 1/2” deep and I was making about 3 passes over the work to get the full cut.
After about one board the bit would move about a 1/16” and finally it slipped so much it almost came out of the router. I tried two different 1/4” bits and finally swapped out the collects and put in the old 1/2 shaft bit. So far so good but that was at the end of the day.
Can a router collet wear out? Is my 1/4” done?