Hi Andrew,
A while ago, a member of this forum had his altmill all set up, but had to wait for the certification somethinsometuin of the spindle, so it would not arrive untill somewhere in the future.
He mounted a 80mm mount sourced with sienci on the excisting one and started carving with his trusted 9ld rusty router.
Since I’m in Ontario, I won’t be getting my spindle until the new certified units are manufactured. Hopefully not too long of a wait.
In the meantime, I set up my Altmill to use a Makita clone trim router (Benchmark from Home Hardware). I purchased the Longmill router mount from Sienci and attached it to the spindle mount on the Altmill. The mounting plate is 1/4" aluminum whereas the shim that fits in the gap of the Altmill mount is 1/8" aluminum.
Both parts milled using the Altmill and …
Maybe an option for you, to look into?
Here’s one with a 3d printed mount.
I decided to do a quick test. I did a model of finger joints. The plywood used here is 3/4" thick, I used a 1/4" endmill, the depth of cut is 6.3 mm for each pass, Total depth of the fingers is 19 mm so 3 passes for each ‘slot’. There is some breakout because no backing was used. The router used is a full sized router and the Altmill spindle is still mounted (can’t see it behind the router). All cutting parameters were the same as if I had used the spindle on a horizontally mounted work piece.
…