16 Attachment(s)
Chinese 710W trimmer router review
This trimmer router was purchased following a discussion on THIS post where a member had previously purchased one following some favourable reviews on another forum. As I had a birthday coming up I decided to treat myself to router number 8, with the hopeful outcome of ditching router number 7 (a Ryobi…’nuff said). Rather than just getting the trimmer only I splurged on the full kit which comes with plunge and tilt bases as well. And when I say “splurged”, we are talking $125 all up including delivery. Had I gone for the trimmer only it would have only set me back $70-ish; that compares very favourably with the cheapest Ryobi ($95) or identically-bad-but-cheaper- Ozito $65 which are plastic bodied monstrosities. This Chinese model has a machined aluminium body.
The pack arrived very quickly and my initial reaction was quite favourable; the main components were rather robust and well presented. All three bases were fairly well machined with no evidence of shoddy machining or skimping on materials. The motor felt solid and was very easy to adjust in the fixed bases; which was the main gripe I have with the Ryobi. The motor spun up easily with no vibration or excessive noise. Apart from the plastic parts of the motor it appears to be a fairly close copy of the Makita RT0700.
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Some closer examinations then followed; firstly I noted that the pressed steel fence was definitely on the flimsy side; it is only made from 2mm thick steel plate. During function testing later on I determined that it was adequate for the job; but only just.
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The same goes for the single collet spanner; again it is made from 2mm plate and while it worked it is really the bare minimum required.
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(Tiffy’s Tip Of The Day: if a tool needs another tool to remove the dangerous bits; attach it to the plug. That way you will ALWAYS unplug the beast before putting your fingers in harms way. And you won’t spend half an hour searching through piles of crap trying to remember exactly where you put it last)
Ok; time for some QA testing. The tilting base has degree markings on one side; these are useless! As shown here with the base set at 0 the cutter is obviously not square to the baseplate. However; I learned years ago to never trust any graduation unless it was also stamped Rabone, Moore & Wright, Starret or Mititoyo.
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The tilting base has a square baseplate with screw hole locations identical to the fixed base, which has a rounded baseplate. This means that the fixed base can have its round baseplate swapped for a square one.
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The fixed base also has provision for a small template guide bush; this is a firm fit in the base and is sufficiently concentric to the cutter. To me this would be handy for making ¼” dovetails or box joints.
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There is also a template guide that can be attached to the plunge base; although this one is a close fit in the base it’s manufacture was a little off and it has a slight offset to one side. However… as the motor isn’t 100% concentric in the plunge base there is a sweet spot where the two axis effectively meet together; it’s just a bit fiddly finding it. The controls on the plunge base are a bit fiddly; in that I have large hands so no matter where I put my fingers something was touching somewhere, but that’s a problem only suffered by the genetically superior. The 3-step turret stop worked fine as does the micro adjuster above it (sorry, no picture) and although the plunge action is a bit sloppy it always locked square and central unless you seriously reefed down on one side. I may attempt to improve on the slop a little in the future if it starts to annoy me. However; this is where I discovered the first manufacturing problem; one of the plunge posts stuck out of the base slightly; meaning that the base wasn’t actually flat and rocked on a flat surface.
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This was definitely a manufacturing issue and is indicative of absolutely zero QA performed on these machines. It’s not an unsolveable problem however; it took me only 3 minutes with a Dremmel to grind off the offending excess material. Had this been a shop-bought item it would have been returned for replacement, but as it was a Made In China at a bargain price I let it slide. What I couldn’t let slide however was a major problem; the cutter showed a considerable amount of run-out.
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No matter what I did I could not stop the cutter from cutting a larger diameter. Clocking the motor with a DTI showed acceptable concentricity so the fault should have been in the collet; and when I took some calliper measurements this was proved to be true with the outer edge being off centre by 0.02mm. At this point I stopped and contacted the seller with the issue; four days later a second brand new trimmer arrived gratis. Unfortunately; that one also had a defective collet.
But wait… there is a second collet supplied with the trimmer! Dammit; it’s for 3/8” shanked cutters; of which we all have thousands kicking around…. well actually I do have one that I picked up years ago in a job lot! In order to prove to myself that the issue was the collet and not the spindle I slipped a brand new Bordo 3/8” drill bit into the chuck and span it by hand; despite the bit being around 6” long there was no perceptible wobble at the tip.
At that time I concluded that for the average purchaser this machine is NOT a recommended purchase; the protruding plunge post and defective collet render the machine not fit for purpose. I however, am a stubborn sod and decided to go ahead anyway to see if there can be any resolution. I have contacted the seller again and requested he supplies me with a new collet. At the same time; assuming that this is a copy of a Makita (who else ever made 3/8” routers?) I’ve taken a gamble and ordered a genuine Makita collet to see if that will cure the issue. So far then I’ve spent almost $145 and have two trimmer bodies, two fixed bases, a tilting base and a plunge base. And if the Makita collet doesn’t fit and the seller can’t send another replacement then I can only use 3/8” shanked cutters in any of them….
… and as I have a cutter with a 3/8” shank I decided to carry on with the test regardless.
The following pics show various cuts I made in a bit of worktop offcuts. I used the tilting base, the plunge base, put on the chip deflector and dust extractors; ran it freehand, ran it along a battern and used the fence.
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At this time I concluded that with the plunge post issue fixed and a concentric cutter, the machine performed over and above its price range.; with only one fault and one annoyance. The fault is the bearing guide; the bush isn’t concentric so if used as a trimmer it leaves slight scalloping along the cut edge. I will say though that I have never used this type of guide before; I have always used a proper bearing guided cutter.
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The annoyance is the variable speed; unlike it’s Makita inspiration the speed control is more of a speed limiter; at the lower speed settings the cutter can bog down and slows the machine down further. There are no additional electrons sent to the motor to compensate for increasing the load. To me though this is only an annoyance because I would only be using this machine with small diameter cutters at max revs; if I feel the need to use my1/4” shanked 5/8” roundover bit I have bigger machines for the job!
The dust extraction on all the bases was excellent and they can all be fitted and removed in seconds without needing weird tools. The optical clarity was adequate; there was slight distortion looking through the plastic but this only became an issue when routing freehand with the fixed base and trying to follow a line by eye.
A potential issue may be the heat given off by the motor; even after only a few minutes of use the trimmer body became uncomfortably hot to hold if removed from one of the bases. The bases all have rubber grips so you are never putting your hands on the body itself but if you feel a need to swap bases midway through a job you might say a rude word or two if you grab hold of the aluminium body. I can say that my Ryobi also gets warm, but with a plastic body it doesn’t feel as hot. I would be interested to know if a genuine Makita heats up the same.
Ok; right now I still stand by my statement that this item as currently sold is not fit for purpose; however if the collet machining issues are fixed then I would give it an 8/10 mark. Older machines appear to not suffer from the collet problem so if the OEM tightens up in that one area they've got themselves a winner again.
If the Makita collet fixes the issue then it gets a 7/10 mark, because that’s a bit more cash spent.
If the Makita collet doesn’t fit and there is no resolution from the seller or OEM, then I give it a 5/10… because my Ryobi body fits into all the attachments so it won’t be a total loss.
I’ll keep youse posted how it all pans out with the Makita collet and the request to the seller; however I’m away from my shed for the next couple of weeks so there will be a delay.