Hello all. My first post to CNCZone so I'd thought I'd start with a bang!

Here's my modest attempt at a workbench router. Design objectives are a 30x60 cut area, low cost, fit in my basement shop, vacuum clamping, and work as a workbench when not in use. It's going to be a flying gantry design and one thing I'm going to do different is have the entire gantry move up and down for the Z axis. The gantry will also be easily removable in case I wanted to adapt the table to laser cutting (or possibly 3-D printing). For the controls, I'm going to try the closed-loop system developed for the little MakeSmith router available over at makesmithtech.com.


On to the build...


I own a rental house and one of my tenants was kind enough to leave this Ikea cabinet behind after move out. Thought it'd make a nice base for a router table.




The cabinet gets some 2x6's melded in to stiffen it up. The cabinet was also disassembled and reassembled with Goop glue to strengthen it further.




Upgraded levelers easily lift the router off the casters to lock it in place.




Why build a torsion box when a commercial solid core door works just as well?




I'm using v-bearings and 1" angles set at 45 degrees for the linear rails. Runs pretty smooth after a little sanding of the rails.




The table was originally cut for a 24" cutting width. I decided to go to a 30" cutting width. The ply strips were added to the edges to accommodate this.




This will be a chain driven machine. Those bolt heads have already been countersunk below the tabletop. An MDF spoil board will be screwed on at some point.




That's it so far. I'm finishing the gantry design and will start building that shortly.

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