I've been using an old Ryobi R500 motor in my router table. It has to be over 20 years old and died. I noticed it was running oddly and looked at it and something had melted and run out the air inlet. I took it apart but it isn't obvious what melted and part availability isn't great. It used 13.3A at full load so it was pretty powerful and served me well for a long time. Initially it was a plunge router but the plunge got sticky and when I built my current router table I decided to move the motor to it.
So I bought a Porter Cable 7518. I got the full router instead of just the motor I needed because it was only 10 or 15 dollars more. The base might be handy sometime. But it is a very big router for hand held use. The router speed is nicely marked on the end of the motor although it will be hard to see in my router table.
My router table design has a home made lift and you mount the router motor to a wooden block that gets bolted down to the lift. So now I need to make the block for the new motor. It will just need a round hole but I'm not entirely sure what to do about the little pins in the motor outside for the height adjustment when used in the router base. I'll probably put little grooves for them in the mounting block but I could make the opening an eighth or so larger so the motor could slide in over them then clamp the motor forcing the little nubs into the wood. That would prevent the motor turning. But I'm not sure it will make the mount as rigid and the grooves would also prevent rotation.
Anybody with experience or a different idea? I don't have a hole saw over 4 inches in diameter so I'm thinking of using one of my PC 690 routers with a circle cutting jig.
So I bought a Porter Cable 7518. I got the full router instead of just the motor I needed because it was only 10 or 15 dollars more. The base might be handy sometime. But it is a very big router for hand held use. The router speed is nicely marked on the end of the motor although it will be hard to see in my router table.
My router table design has a home made lift and you mount the router motor to a wooden block that gets bolted down to the lift. So now I need to make the block for the new motor. It will just need a round hole but I'm not entirely sure what to do about the little pins in the motor outside for the height adjustment when used in the router base. I'll probably put little grooves for them in the mounting block but I could make the opening an eighth or so larger so the motor could slide in over them then clamp the motor forcing the little nubs into the wood. That would prevent the motor turning. But I'm not sure it will make the mount as rigid and the grooves would also prevent rotation.
Anybody with experience or a different idea? I don't have a hole saw over 4 inches in diameter so I'm thinking of using one of my PC 690 routers with a circle cutting jig.