Just a thought I had recently: I’ve got a shapeoko 4 xxl, with I believe the standard router, its great but there are somethings where having just a regular hand held router would come in handy. Is there anyway to get just the housing of a hand helf router and use the router from my shapeoko?
I figure if I could get just the housing and use the carbide router then it would save me a fair bit of money, right?
I’m interested to hear any thoughts you guys have or if anyone has done/tried to do this already.
The mount is aluminum, and not designed to have the router taken out and put back in — if you need a hand router, you should buy one — it can serve as a backup to the router in the machine.
I bought a Dewalt cordless trim router for doing roundovers mostly. It replaces my ancient Bosch corded model that finally wore out. I am happy with the cordless Dewalt and for doing roundovers on large projects it is definitely better not to have a cord.
Wait. What? Are you actually asking if you need to buy another tool for the shop? Well, of course you do!
A second router will prove a valuable tool when using a cnc. You can do edge cuts and round overs much easier by hand plus you can do them while your machine is cutting the next sign/project. I’ve always had a chorded router and prefer those. Just make sure the one you get can fit into the cnc bracket – then you’ll always have a backup at the ready.