Monday, February 22, 2010

Introducing The Motorized Router Lift




Coming Soon!

You will be able to buy the retail version of the Motorized Router Lift from MLCS.



Here is a sneak peek at the greatest innovation in woodworking router tables and lifts! MLCS Woodworking and Eagle Lake Woodworking have spent two plus years designing, developing, and testing the world's first foot-activated MOTORIZED ROUTER LIFT for retail sale.



Please Note: the device shown in the video and pictured on this page is a FACTORY PROTOTYPE. The actual retail unit may differ slightly in appearance and function.



Some of the features of this new lift are:

The lift itself is motorized. There are no cranks, handles, etc. used to raise and lower the router. It comes with a control panel that mounts on a router table. The electronic "brain" in the control panel, and switches on the panel, allows one to use the variable speed control feature of the lift motor, change the direction of travel with the push of a button from up from to down and has a digital display that reads to .001 thousandths of an inch. The readout can be set to zero at any point on the travel.



For hands free use, the lift comes with a foot pedal that allows the user to both raise and lower the lift.



The Control Panel
The Advanced Control panel allows the operator to:

* Set the speed of the lift
* Zero out the height of the lift
* See the current height, direction, and speed
* Switch between inches and milimeters
* Activate the lift up or down
* Hold the lift (disables the lift to prevent accidental activation from the footswitch)

The lift shows precision to the .001 inches, and allows for micro-adjustment of the bit height at slow speeds. Motorized Router Lift Control Panel
Bidirectional Footswitch
The footswitch allows the operator to raise or lower the lift while keeping both hands on the work piece.

Operations that were previously too difficult or too dangerous can now be perform on the router table - with better dust collection and improved safety.

You can turn your router table into an efficient and effective mortising machine. A simple jig that controls the movement of the work piece on top of the table, combined with raising the spinning bit via the footswitch, will yield perfect mortises. Footswitch
The Lift
The lift is controlled by a powerful DC motor that transfers the power to the lift using cogged pulleys and belt. This effective transfer of power yields no backlash when adjusting height.

The lift has a depth stop that triggers a microswitch to stop the lift when the desired height is reached. The depth stop is used to set the maximum height that the bit can protrude above the table. This feature is useful for repeatable cuts and incremental passes.

The router motor requires no tools to mount in the lift!