Been AWOL for a while...

[Mooselake]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P6K9BL3

The price jumped $55 in the last couple days, don't know if that's a glitch or I lucked out.  There's a passel of vendors selling this exact router, Sainsmart included an assembly manual that while short made it easy to put it together.  This is the "upgrade" version, changes several of the aluminum extrusions for phenolic parts that seem pretty stout and pre-inserted bearings and attached ER11 adapter (saves using the freezer/heat technique to put it on the motor shaft).  The side pieces went from 20x20 to 20x40 and everything was black anodized.  The Z axis, spindle holder, and under table bearing holders are 3D printed, and the TR8 leadscrew has anti-backlash nuts.

I assembled it yesterday, took around 3 hours (still needs the wiring cleaned up), but I wasn't trying to be very fast.  It included all the tools (i.e. a set of allen wrenches) needed to put it together.  It passed the quick dry run test but no actual cutting yet.  Today I'm going to HD to get some pieces of pine to practice on (new house, no scrap bin).  The 775 spindle is pretty wimpy, but I'd guess (just from the size and sound) that it's comparable to a cheaper dremel.  I think it's the 7000rpm version, but no optical tach here to test it.  There's upgrade printable brackets on TV to use higher power air cooled spindles.  Of course there's several diode laser add-ons, I might go for the 5.5W (not really that powerful, I read) version after I run out of things to try with the spindle.  It comes with 10 of those V engraving bits, I ordered 10 1/8" ball end mills and a cheap assortment of (SainSmart brand) assorted diameter straight bits.

I think it's pretty comparable to my belt driven Zenbot Mini, but it cost less than just the Gecko G540 controller board and has almost twice the cutting area (12x7.5").  Free software is a lot easier to find than it was in 2012, too, and it doesn't take a dedicated LinuxCNC machine to run it.

So far I'm very happy with what I got.  It'll take a couple hours to swing by the big box store and see what I can find to practice on, would have done it already but had PT this morning.  I plan to do a little write up on it after I give it a try.

Kirk