Thread: Router Pantograph build - work in progress

Years ago I bought a commercially made router pantograph. It was useless! I disassembled it and put it back in its box along with all the templates that came with it and haven't touched it since. The concept was always good, but the one I bought certainly did not live up to expectations, but good ideas do not die, they just hang around and come to the surface when their time comes.

Many of you would know that I lost most of my workshop space about 6 months ago when we had to rescue my stepdaughter from a domestic violence situation, moving her and her daughter and all their worldly goods into our house and garage, filling up my workspace.

So looking for something to do that doesn't need a lot of space, about a week ago, I thought I would revisit the router pantograph idea.

I have been visiting Matthias Wandall's site, woodgears.ca, for quite a few years and the first time I saw his router pantograph I had wished that the one I bought was half as good. Anyway, I went on his website and checked it out again and watched the videos, all that stuff and decided that I could design and build one like that.

Then I thought - hang on - why go out and design one of my own when all the hard work has already been done? He only wants US$12.00 for the plans. So I bought and downloaded them. Very happy with them - so far at least. Full-scale drawings of EVERYTHING. He does this so that you can stick the printout onto the plywood and cut the pieces out on the bandsaw. I am doing exactly that for the router mount pieces which are curved, but the rest are straight-sided so I am using the written measurements on the drawings to cut the straight pieces out on the tablesaw. Once the piece is cut out I place it on top of the corresponding drawing so that I can see at a glance which pieces are done and which are still required.

I think that buying the plans instead of spending hours fiddling around finetuning things was probably a good investment, but of course, that depends on how happy I am with the final product and how much fiddling and fine-tuning I have to do to get it to the stage that I am happy with it. I will let you know at the end.

Anyway, progress so far:

Yesterday -
I bought and printed out the plans. I own four routers and they are all too big for this application, so I bought the router to fit yesterday as well. It is a Makita rt0700c. Matthias designed the router pantograph for the Bosch Colt router which is a little bit larger in diameter in the body and is only 550 watts as opposed to the makita being 710 watts. The plans as they come include a circle to cut out for the same size as the Makita router so no modifications are necessary. bought a 1/4 sheet of 18mm plywood and a 3m length of metal rod for the pins. I know I will only need about half a metre but it only cost $8 for the length so now I have some spare for another project, like the pantorouter from the same source.

Today -
I glued the sheets of the plan, printed on A4 paper into the bigger sheets, which was easy to do because of the thought that went in to compiling them. I glued the sheet of the curved bits onto a piece of plywood cut to shape. I then cut out the basic outline of the straight sided bits.

I only got about an hour of shed-time today due to other commitments so thats all I got to do. If you want to look into what this jig can do check in to it here 3-D router pantograph

Here's some photos of what I did today:


All the templates together. The router mount ones are glued to the piece of plywood in this shot.
IMG062.jpg

Full scale drawings of assembled components are supplied to assist with assembly. Great idea
IMG063.jpg

You also get a plan for a mount for a rotary tool such as a dremel. I have a Triton rotary tool so I will probably modify this to fit the triton at some stage, maybe as I am working on the rest of it. Either way it is a great inclusion
IMG064.jpg

All the pieces siting on the full-scale drawing - cut to size but all the "cutouts" still need to be done and the bandsaw cutting as well
IMG065.jpg

The router:
IMG066.jpg


Some of you may have noticed that the piece of plywood that I have been placing the pieces on to photograph has been getting narrower and narrower as the night goes on. It is turning into the components now sitting on top of the plan.

Next step is to cut out the curved bits on the bandsaw, do the cutouts in the straight piece,s mark and drill the holes and cut the metal rod to length. If I had not bought the plans and went ahead designing my own, I would be still working out range of movement, space and time sizes of viable work area. Instead, the damn thing is only hours away from completion (shed-hours that is - a rare commodity these days but a precious one).

I do not know if I will get any shed-time tomorrow but whenever I do I will post an update on the progress.

Cheers

Doug