Shop made micro-adjustable plunge base

[Bruce Page]

Recently, I had the urge to scatter stainless steel, brass and aluminum chips all over the shop. I was impressed with the new MicroFence® Plunge Base (www.microfence.com) that they have designed for various trim routers. As luck would have it, Santa brought me the new Bosch variable speed Colt to play with.

My base is pretty much a clone of the MF with a few changes/improvements. This project even included some woodworking; note the two maple burl knobs. (I think they turned out ok, for not being a wood turner ). The knobs are finished with John Miliunas’s witches brew (equal parts of BLO, wipe-on poly, & naphtha) thanks John!

To make the micrometer threads, I threaded the 304 SS bar stock to class 3A specs (read tight) and borrowed a 3B tap from work to tap the brass block with. The micrometer style adjustment system is surprisingly accurate with less than .001 deviations per full length of travel. Machining the micrometer barrel was a bit tedious with each graduation line having to be accurately indexed 7°, 12 min, 0 sec., using my 14” rotary table. (Pic#5)

The turret rotates on a small thrust bearing and there is a ball plunger installed in the base that indexes each post by 120°.

I had some ¼” Lexan sheet so I made three bases to cover all contingencies.

Travel is a little over 2¾”. The compression springs from HD are a little stouter than I wanted but I discovered that unless you’re willing to buy 100 or more from a spring company, your choices are limited. I’ll keep looking…

All in all, I have about $40 in it including the two trick LED lights from MicroFence.

[Bruce Page]

Few more pics

[Chris Padilla]

Sweet stuff, Bruce!! How much for you to make me one??? hahahahaha....

[Jim Dunn]

Beautiful, brilliant, outstanding, somebody help me here I'm running outa words.

Jim

[Steve Clardy]

Awesome!! Looks nice!

[Jim Becker]

You are truly skilled...excellent results!

[Doug Shepard]

Awesome! Looks even better than the MF version I got this week. Sure wish I had the knowledge, skill, and tools to whip that kind of stuff up. I kept wondering what kind of "improvements" you might be cooking up. I was kind of expecting to see some sort of integral dust collection and maybe a Wixey digital readout for depth. Will yours work with MF's edge guide too?

[Peter Pedisich]

Bruce,

Nothing short of remarkable.

Restores my faith in America, HEY! all you guys under 30 - think about what it took to make this!

[Bruce Page]

Thanks guys, this was actually fun to build. It has been many years since I left the machinist trades and I always enjoyed it. This was a “fix” for my metal thrashing urges.

Doug, dust collection is the one thing I wish I could have incorporated into it, but short of making an injection mold, I couldn’t figure any graceful way to do it.
If the MF’s edge guide posts are on 3 inch (?) centers, then it will work. I based the 3” on a hunch looking at the pictures on the MF website. I plan on making my own edge guide for it anyway.

[Roy Wall]

Bruce,

I've been in awe for 20 minutes looking at your photos. Read another thread.......come back to this one.......jaw still dropped open.....

Precision, execution, and craftsmanship can't get any better than this

Thanks for sharing..............

[Mark Singer]

Bruce,
You are amazing! That work is unbelevible! I can't even imagine how you did it! You should be making all your own hardware including pulls and hinges... Bruce my Bosch Colt is very jealous....it is a great little router! Ireally like most of their tools a lot. The router is so smooth and ergonomic...its the first one I want to use.

[David LaRue]

Yowza Yowza Yowza ... jaw dropping, stunning, WOW! No wonder we can get to the moon and back! Great job. Way beyond anything I could dream of building.

[John Miliunas]

OMG!!!! I already knew you were a skilled machinist but, this is just over the top! And there I thought I was doing well bending a couple junks of flat steel to mount that DRO. That's what I get for thinking! Sorry, I just can't come up with any additional adjectives to completely describe what I'm thinking or seeing right now! Just way, way cool, Bruce!

[Vaughn McMillan]

Man Bruce, once you get a little more practice, you'll be pretty good at that metal scattering stuff. Absolutely stunning work. If I did metalworking, I'd be selling my tools in surrender right about now. Great job.

- Vaughn

[Keith Outten]

Just Excellent!

Machinist's produce the tools for all trades, they are the ultimate craftsmen.

Bruce, I own a benchmill and a South Bend 9 metal lathe but don't have the skills to produce such a nice piece. Thanks for sharing your new router base system I really enjoyed the pics and can appreciate the workmanship involved.