I opted for the Makita router (RT0700cx4 here in the UK. RT0701 in the US I believe) as it was a lot cheaper than the Dewalt. It comes with a trimmer base which, with some simple modification, becomes a great dust shoe.
The trimmer base has a black plastic piece held on with 4 screws. This is the bit that would normally slide along the piece you’re trimming. I removed the screws and 3D printed a version of this plate with a circumference lip which would hold the brush/transparent flexible plastic/fabric - whatever you prefer. I happen to have some thick felt lying around so super-glued it to the inside rim of the lip. Works well.
The Makita’s power cord needs to be on the left and pressed firmly against the front of the Shapeoko’s Z axis plate. This way the clear plastic window is visible.
To remove the trimmer base with dust shoe, the gantry needs to be in the maximum front position so that the router overhangs the front. Once done, it’s super easy to slide on or off.
If you’re interested in the stl file, I just put it up on thingyverse:
Cool mod! You may find out that you need longer brushes when you cut jobs with large amounts of Z travel (and later fall in love with the Suckit dust boot as many here did, since it solves exactly that problem)
I have the same Makita cheat sheet, very useful at first, but find it much more convenient now to use a cheap tachymeter (e.g. something like this but you can get a cheaper model from asia) to measure the actual RPM, and turn the knob to reach the desired value. It’s obviously much more precise too, when you have to set the router to 15.000 RPM and don’t want to guess where 3/5 of the rotation between 2 and 3 is exactly
I’ll have a look at the Suckit to understand what you mean.
About the Makita, the speed switch has numbers which ‘click’ when changed so if I get myself a tachymeter, it will give me the speed at each number but how would I vary it precisely? The ‘clicking’ self adjusts to a set speed.
About the Suckit, I just meant that it’s attached to the X/Z carriage, not to the router, therefore the boot is always in contact with the surface of the stock, therefore you don’t loose suction when the router goes up.
About the Makita, I have the RT0700C too (bought about 2 years ago) and its RPM dial does not click, it is continuous. They must have changed the design since then. If you are stuck with predefined positions, I agree the tachymeter is useless.
