Sherwood Round Body Router Motor (and Lift)

[djeddy]

After burning up my 2nd TRA001 speed control (mmm, yummy electrical smell), and having been wanting to go to a full-size router table for a little while now, I bit the bullet and got myself a cast-iron table, router lift, and round-body motor from Timbecon. The router table is just a router table, cast iron top and quite nice but nothing special, so I will concentrate my comments on the router motor and lift. The mitre gauge it comes with is garbage. One nice touch is that it comes with a handy spot to store the handle for the raise/lower for the lift, which is very convenient.

The lift is nice enough. It's my first router lift so I don't have much in the way of critical comments to make. It's got mm markings on the up/down dial and it's slow enough to be accurate but fast enough not to be a pain to lift up the router motor for a bit change. It doesn't come with any instructions for fitting but the process is obvious enough. It uses a chain drive mechanism with four lift posts so it shouldn't bind in future. Adjusting the plate so it was dead level according to my dial gauge was pretty easy and only required a small amount of back and forth.

The router motor impressed me. The spindle itself is quite a bit beefier than either the Triton TRA001 or the Bosch GOF1600 I have, and the motor runs much more quietly. The business end takes standard ER20 collets, meaning that if you want you can fit literally any size router bit or endmill up to 1/2", or as small as a few mm. The speed adjustment works well and is easy to use. Only time will tell how robust it really is, but so far I'm very pleased.

Recommended. The 3kW water cooled CNC spindle you can get from them would probably be even better but it's quite a bit more expensive.

PS - I also got their dust box, which fits well, comes with a Tee hose for connecting to the fence, and is very effective. Never had really effective router dust control before now.

PPS - Timbecon have recently come out with a less-powerful 1000W version of their round body motor (which I almost ended up receiving because the boxes look almost identical according to the Perth warehouse guy). My comments relate to the 1800W version. I have read about speed controller issues that have reportedly been fixed - we shall see.

[Jim Carroll]

As it is chain drive bring it out regularily and blow out as the dust will build up in the chain if left alone.
Use Dry lube like they use for Zips

[djeddy]

Thanks Jim, I'll be sure to do that.