Harbor Freight sells a router that looks the same as the Makita RT701C. I’ve been using it on my CNC for about 6 months with no faults whatsoever. Here in Florida it sells for 59.95. At that price you can buy a spare without hurting your budget. I looked at spindles and for the money they don’t do any thing for me. The Bauer I bought at Harbor Freight ran for 8 hours straight and never got above 115 degrees F.
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could you give the exact model number of that bauer is it this one?
SKU(s)
58253
Brand
BAUER
Model
19121E-B
I understand this is quite an old discussion but I just wanted to highglight that it’s not possible to home the Z Axis with the newer and taller RTO702C model. As stated above, yes the body is 10mm longer and when trying to home the Z axis it will push up against the mounting plate of the stepper motor.
Hey Keith, hey all,
I have never installed it into a Onefinity CNC machine, but yes the upper part is clearly taller, here some pics in case someone wants to see it:
Yeah, I was excited to get my machine together. I homed the machine without the router and when I fitted the router I jogged the Z axis up towards the home position. I quickly realised it would have hit the stepper motor mounting plate had I hit home all.
Hmmmmm… how annoying
Hey Keith,
if you don’t want to file away the Makita housing, you can move the stepper up, like the 65 mm spindle people must do.
Or you attach some stop for homing to force it to bump on it before it reaches the end of travel, like Bill @Machinist showed on X axis, but you loose effective Z travel then. See also Stops for Homing. This way it would not bump against the router housing during stall homing.
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Hey Keith,
It should home though (if you tolerate scratches in the plastic housing from bumping). Can you determine how much millimeters are missing exactly?
Hey Keith,
or time to retrofit inductive proximity sensors to decommission the stock stall homing! 
With those you can adjust where the travel ends by positioning the sensor.
If you look at my photo, the carriage still needs to travel 12mm to be homed. In that photo, the router is probably just 3mm away from the mounting plate.
I thought if it was possible to fit taller standoffs for the stepper motor it would resolve the issue as the current Makita Trim routers in Europe all incorporate this new non-start feature. I know longer couplers may be required but they would’nt affect the travel on the Z axis. Your not making the drive screw shorter but just raising the stepper motor and mounting plate 12mm.
Yeah moving the stepper cage up is the only solution viable if Onefinity wish to supply within Europe. This newer model I think is only in Europe as we have more stringent health and safety laws.
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Hey Keith, hey all,
I think it’s not only the European model, but the whole 200 V class world (blue/green), which means, everywhere except in the 100 V class world (brown/orange). And in Japan (also 100 V class), you only get LiIon-battery cordless Makita trim routers today (not the badest thing).
If I search the web, I don’t see the old RT0700C model still being available anywhere.
As the Makita hand trim router is a tool for hand-held, short duration use that looses its warranty as soon as you mount it into a CNC machine (Makita said), I think the anti-autorestart function makes sense. Imagine the accidents that can happen if a hand-held tool is on when the power comes back after an outage (don’t ask me how I know).
So I think the people in the girly power world should expect this (in fact not new) feature to come soon to you too.
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Just looked up these but it’s the plate that the stepper motor is mounted on that needs to be raised 12mm.
Hey Keith,
if I wanted to use a 65 mm diameter router or spindle, I would choose that solution too. These users obviously needed to file some material away on the stepper mounting plate to make it work:
Hey all,
just for the record: On Onefinity Original Series, with the optional 80 mm mount the milling motor clears the stepper cage:
And if you upgrade to Z-20 heavy Z assembly, with both 65 mm and 80 mm mounts the milling motor clears the stepper cage (the 65 mm and 80 mm mounts for Z-20 Z assembly are not identical to those of Original Z-16 Z assembly!).
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I’m hoping to hear back from Onefinity to see if this is a viable solution. I’m wondering if moving the stepper motor further from the drive screw would have any direct impact on the Z axis travel? I’ve a vague understanding of CNC’s but I’m guessing the stepper motor will still rotate a certain amount per step regardless of distance from the lead screw?
No worry, not with a solution like this.
yes, you don’t do anything with the ball screw so travel stays the same and you don’t change the stepper so the steps stay the same too. You just put in a shaft extension bar (see image below, at the bottom of image) with a second coupler that allows the stepper to be further away. Just be sure that the coupler is matching the shaft diameter and sits tight. You also need four longer stepper bolts.
Shaft couplers are e.g. available here.
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Hey Keith, hey all,
the first solution to the “65 mm spindle bumping the stepper cage problem” I saw was on thingiverse.com and it consisted in 3D-printing two taller stepper mounting blocks:
This allowed to move up the plate on which the stepper sits, instead of only the stepper. That meant you needed longer bolts for the two mounting blocks, not for the stepper itself. The rest was the same, shaft extension and 2nd shaft coupler.
But you are much better off with the solution linked in the other post above, if it’s okay to file a bit of material away from the stepper mounting plate as shown on the pictures.
One advantage of this solution is that the position of the center of the router shaft stays very close to the Z rails which means, less leverage force, and thus less deflection under load when milling. And when you update the milling motor, you can go to a 65 mm spindle. Note that for this case lifting the stepper by 12 mm will not be enough! I would choose more right away now you’re at it.
Lifting it by 50 mm sounds reasonable, possibly a little more could be better, but I don’t know which value would be the best as I don’t have a 65 mm spindle, only a 80 mm spindle. It also depends on whether you take an air-cooled spindle (seen above) or a water-cooled spindle. The latter are longer so with lifting by 75 mm (3 inches) you are on the safe side.
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Do we know whether the Z20, the heavy duty Z-slider) has the same problem with the clearance?