Hello. I have my Gen 2 foreman all set up. I am very close to surfacing my spoil board. I have a question about z slider placement for a makita router. Right now it seems very high in the top holes. Although the 1 inch suck it boot touches the board. The collet seems like it’s too high to me. There is no bit in the router and the collet is 1 1/4” off the spoil board. The surfacing bit won’t even touch the spoil board.
Either build up your waste board or lower the Z. You collet doesn’t need to be able to touch the waste board. Only needs to go as low as your shortest bit length. If your collet is about 3/4” off the spoil board, I doubt you would have anything shorter than that chucked up.
It appears that the Z slider is as low as it goes. Not sure I can lower it anymore. Double the waste board? Not sure that’s how this was designed. There is no way the Z slider is correct for a makita router
So does everyone that uses a makita router have this issue? The IDC Surfacing bit shaft is 1 1/2 inches long. At this point maybe 3/8 of an inch would be in the collet. That’s not right. If everyone with a makita has this issue a comment in the manual would be helpful. Not real happy if I have to pull my spoil board apart and put riser under it.
I remember reading some place that you are supposed to use different mounting holes for the z axis when using a router vs when you are using a spindle. I’ll see if I can find what I saw.
@ 10:30min Mark it talks about the difference. It should be in the manual tho.
The guy in the video says to mount it in the top holes. Any other holes raise it. I’m stumped. Also you can’t physically lower the slider because it will hit the Z motor. I can’t see how this works with a makita router.
That’s the video I watched. It is mounted as stated in the video but there is no way the router is long enough to reach low enough. Nowhere in the video is there a double or raised spoil board. It would take bits with 2 1/2 inch long shafts to work like this. How close to the spoil board should the collet be? Lower than 1 3/8 inches for sure. This can’t work as designed with 1 1/2 shaft bits. The promatic surfacing bit shaft is even shorter since it will never work like this.
Yes. The mounting screws are about four inches apart. The Z slider is mounted in the top holes and at the bottom in the only holes that line up. I see no way to lower the slider anymore. This is a design flaw or I’m missing something stupid here. You can’t lower it anymore. No holes line up and Z motor won’t let you lower it. Only can go up. I’m leaning to design flaw.
Your Z slider looks a lot lower than mine
There are a lot of people using Makita routers, if there were an issue I’m sure people would be screaming about it. Can you take a few pics of the set up? Maybe you are right, but another set of eyes never hurts. That is just the video, not mine.
Feeling like you are in no man’s land sucks, but its a pretty good learning curve. To me it looks like you are right and the Z is mounted at its lowest point. It looks like you have the QCW, I believe every unit comes with riser blocks for the Y rails regardless if you need them or not, by chance do you have those installed? Might be stupid questions, but just trying to walk through it with ya.
They are not installed. They are in the box they came in.
If I have to take my spoil board apart and apply some BS work around it screams of a design flaw. It I have to take it apart I may as well send it back to Canada. It’s unsafe to operate in this state. There is no way this works correctly with this router.
Yeah sorry, I don’t have more to help you out with right now. Adding another layer of MDF on top of what you currently have would get you in better shape. It does mention that in the manual, but without being there, I would agree something is off. I need to get to bed, but you don’t need to rip your spoil board apart, for the time being if you want to get to playing with the machine, add another layer of spoil board. It won’t hurt and generally you want more than 3/4” thick spoil board anyway. Put some fresh eyes on it in the morning and give a call into tech support on Monday or shoot them an email tomorrow. I have been messing with these things for a long time…I thinking half my dental problems are from gnashing my teeth trouble shooting machinery. 1F with make it right if there is a hardware issue and if its user error, they will help figure that out too. Sorry you are struggling. I’ll help ya if I can. Shake it off and get some rest…get some more MDF in the morning, glue it to the boards you already have down and give her a whirl.
From the little bit I have been able to look at this morning, when using a Makita router the waste board needs to be thicker. You don’t have to take your old one off, just glue on another layer or two.
I appreciate you spending time with me on this. This could have been avoided by clear instructions in the manual. I have found I’ve had to search for information that comes from folks like you. Thank you for your help
Anytime, I agree there should be better documentation. Good luck with machine. Glad to help anytime.