Makita Trim Router ~ Speed Settings

Hello all. I see a fair number of people using the Makita Trim Router with their LongMill CNC machines. I used an Extech digital tachometer to obtain the data for each of the 6 marked values on the rheostat and for the intermediate speeds as well.

I marked the centre point of the casing below the speed wheel. I also marked the intermediate points between the numbers with a permanent black sharpie so that each speed would be reproducible easily. I have attached a PDF file with the no load speed data obtained with the Extech tachometer and hope that some people will find this information useful.

Makita Router Speeds.pdf (44.1 KB)

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That’s great. thanks for sharing your chart!

Greg

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No worries. If it is helpful, I am happy. I forgot to mention in the screed that the data noted is an average taken over five readings

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@jepho Thank you so much for the info and chart. Being a new CNC user, I find this info very useful. Thanks again!
Jake

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You are welcome, @Jake. Information that one can use is out there but it takes a while to track it down and collate the useful stuff, because you don’t know enough about what you need to know early on in your CNC journey. I found it a tricky journey which was tough to navigate in the early months of machine ownership because I was lost in a sea of information. I am about 21 months into my CNC adventure and now I can make sense of the information I need to learn. I can think about a project and get my machine to cut it as I had considered it.

My very first cut which used two different cutters was a nightmare. I had no idea how to use two different tools on the same job. I did not know it would be a problem until I had made the first cut, removing the waste material and then came to change the tool. It was a major discovery to understand that the tools were different lengths and needed to be zeroed to the same point. The first cutter had cut away the material that I had zeroed it on and now I had no clue how to find that same zero point for a different length cutter.

Now I use a tool length measurement device and I also note the numbers where the machine spindle
occupies a physical space. I could manage the tool change without the device now but it required learning the techniques one could use. Job planning is a major skill but it must be learned well if you are to avoid this type of error.

I like using a CNC machine because it occupies me fully after my retirement from full time work. All machines at the hobby level have advantages and disadvantages when set against each other. Your biggest asset is you because that is what you bring to the party and the machine is irrelevant. What is nice about the approach of Sienci is that they are more than merely box shifters.

It is in the company’s interest to have a lot of happy users. Minimising the out of the box frustrations is a major task when you cannot control the environment in which people set up their machines. They look like they are around for the long haul and that should give you the confidence to pick up the knowhow to become a good machinist using a LongMill. I don’t work for Sienci and I come here with a different machine. I do use gSender (having used seven different software packages) and it is a really effective machine control software.

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@jepho - Thanks for the speed chart Jeffrey. I’m sure this will help a lot of users. Keep in mind these settings are from your router so others may not be exactly the same but close. I don’t say this to put down your information because we all appreciate your effort in creating and providing the chart. Just a little “heads up”.

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No Worries. I realised they are likely to all be different. Hence the five averaged readings for each data point. It will be reasonably close though… probably within 300 RPM. It may even encourage folk to collect their own readings. The tachometers are readily available.

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Reasonably close is close enough for wood…
Thanks for your testing!

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@jepho I’ve moved your post to New Wisdom in Community Discussion - Material Hold down techniques, Jeffrey. I believe that it will get more well-deserved attention here.

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Thanks, grant. That is much appreciated. :joy:

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Outstanding! I am glad I asked because making my 1st spoilboard for the MK2 with 3/4" MDF, I ruined a 1/4" router bit by having the speed on max. A RED HOT bit is not a very good thing to have! (I guess I can add that you can’t fix stupid to that) :grimacing:
Thank you for this very helpful feedback.
Bill

3 posts were split to a new topic: Spoil board material - discussion

Thank you!!! I actually purchased a digital tach to do just the same thing, but haven’t gotten round to it yet…might send my tach back!!

You are welcome, Steve. If it saves you the cost of the digital tacho, so much the better.

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@Fredymac, did you get fire or just smoke? Not stupid, that’s how we learn new stuff. I usually run 1/4" bits at #4 on the Makita router and 100"-120" / min. depending on wood density. The chips come out warm and the bit stays cool. The Vectric software has a built in chip load calculator to use as a starting point so if you get close with the speed and a conservative feed rate, you can increase or decrease the feed rate in gsender to get warm chips and a cool bit and take a note of the feed rate you are using FOR EACH TYPE OF WOOD. I have not run the router above #4 yet…
@jepho yep, MDF is bad for lungs! I use hot glue for hold down so never surfaced the spoil board, only the board that is glued to it. I do have a lot of oops depth settings that went into the spoil board though doing cutouts. When I can’t glue around the oopsies, I’ll just flip the board over and carry on. I will plug your speed settings into Vectric so it will recalculate the chip loads and thanks again for your testing!

2 posts were split to a new topic: Material hold down techniques

I got smoke and a red-hot bit. Anyway, I now realize that MDF needs a much lower RPM and the replacement bit is very happy about that.

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@Fredymac @jepho I’ve moved your discussion on spoil board materials to a new topic in New Wisdom - spoil board material - discussion. I believe it will garner more interest there than in a topic initially discussing speed settings on the Makita router.

What kind of tachometer? I’m not familiar with what you mean.

You can get much cheaper ones than this, which is the model I use. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of other products.