While I wait for my spindle

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 my Ridgid router. That router fits inside the Altmill mount with the use of 80mm to 61mm reducing sleeve 3D printed by one of this forum’s members (@gwilki). Unfortunately, the Ridgid router has a shoulder at the top of the body. As a result, it can’t sit low enough in the mount and bits are 2" off my wasteboard. To mill the parts, I had to use blocking to raise the aluminum.

The 65mm mount attached to the spindle mount:


And the Ridgid router and green sleeve

Since the trim router sits about 4" in front of the spindle, it actually extends in front of the table. So using @Jens method of vertical milling, I can use this setup to do dovetails or finger joints on the ends of longer boards.

One thing learned with this exercise: if you use double-sided tape to hold down aluminum, don’t use cutting oil as it will dissolve the adhesive on the tape. Luckily, I caught it in time!

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isn’t the jury still out on the rigidity of such front mounts?

Perhaps, but in this case, I’m the judge, jury, and executioner.

I used it to mill a few parts and it was fine with a router and feed rates on the slower side of the recommended values. There’s no flex when applying force by hand and I could not detect any chatter while in use.

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