Thread: Shaper vs router table

Hi Phil,

Have a quick look at the cost of spindle moulder tooling and that should focus your mind pretty quick. Cheers


Old Pete

Howzit Phil, long time since I read your voice mate

Old Pete has pointed out the tooling issue, you may find that you need to buy shapes you already have in a router bit which will either be expensive or mean you mount your router in a table anyway.

Router are faster and (arguably) leave a finer finish.
Spindle moulders on the other hand will go all day hogging larger profiles.
Routers are faster to change bits (usually).
SMs are quieter to run and don't set your teeth on edge.

For Triton spares, try Toolsparesonline.com. They have a speed controller for 40GBP

cheers.

Originally Posted by Groggy

Howzit Phil, long time since I read your voice mate
cheers.

Hi Greg, Yes it has been a while.
Thanks for the info (Thanks to Old Pete as well).
There is a box of 20 odd cutters included. But point taken.
Thanks for the spares link. Will have a look.

Cheers
Phil

I have a makita 3hp, 1/2" variable speed router which did some time in a table and 5hp spindle moulder.

The router is noisy, dirty and only used when the spindle moulder can't. Hand held!

The spindle is quiet, has excellent dust extraction, makes a much, much better cut (argument) and I have found tooling to be more economical (costs more to set up but cheaper in the long run). Spindle moulders should all come with a power feed, hand feeding straight stock is not a good idea, curved jobs set up in a suitable jig are fine to feed with care!

Originally Posted by old pete

Hi Phil,

Have a quick look at the cost of spindle moulder tooling and that should focus your mind pretty quick. Cheers


Old Pete

Some moulders can take an attachment for router bits to be used.

Finish quality has a lot more factors than how fast the cutter goes; sharpness, number of wings/blades, feed rate and rigidity of the shaft all affect the end result.

Also on the topic of speed, routers may spin faster but moulder cutter heads are anywhere from 3 to over 10 times the size so if you do the math I think you'll find that the actual speed of the cutting edge in a moulder is still faster

Thanks for the replies.

Phil

Hi Phil,

Just by way of a bit of further explanation re router/spindle moulder speed in addition to that supplied by Elanjacobs.

The rotational speed of the shaft is not of great relevance in the comparative analysis....it's the perimeter speed of the tooling or the distance covered by the tooling cutters per unit of time that does the job. In very rough terms the algorithym is


Spindle speed in RPM x tool diameter x 3.14. gives tool distance travel per minute

The number of cuts per unit of time is also significant in determining finish quality. In high quality industrial moulders the cutters, and there are up to 16 cutters per spindle, are sharpened and jointed in the cutter head which is removed from the machine for the purpose. This gives a spindle where all the cutters follow exactly the same circle. Some moulders have a system where the shaft of the spindle is suspended in a high pressure grease containment in its bearing block thus removing another potential element that can introduce lack of tooling concentricity.

Moulding is part precision science, part art, and I think perhaps even a bit of black magic!!

Cheers Old Pete

The number of cuts per unit of time is also significant in determining finish quality. In high quality industrial moulders the cutters, and there are up to 16 cutters per spindle, are sharpened and jointed in the cutter head which is removed from the machine for the purpose. This gives a spindle where all the cutters follow exactly the same circle. Some moulders have a system where the shaft of the spindle is suspended in a high pressure grease containment in its bearing block thus removing another potential element that can introduce lack of tooling concentricity.

Such tooling is for high feed speed 4-siders (up to 1000m/min - not a typo). They go up to 32 knives and need motors as powerful as a small car. They are sharpened out of the machine, but the jointing actually happens with the head in and running. The high pressure (300 bar) grease clamping is actually on the cutter, not on the spindle bearing, and it expands special chambers in the head to secure it ok the shaft in place of traditional lock nuts.

Sorry Pete, don't want it to look like I'm hijacking all your posts

Do you recon a router table with 1400 w festool router could do a cope and stick cut, for making up a simple sash in 33mm wrc, or would I be wasting my time buying the cutter?

Originally Posted by darrens

Do you recon a router table with 1400 w festool router could do a cope and stick cut, for making up a simple sash in 33mm wrc, or would I be wasting my time buying the cutter?

Should power right through it, it's only a softwood