Last month I discussed this issue with a Festool representative at a demonstration at Hartville Tool because my 1400 router has the same issue. I could not get the PC style bushing supplied with Whiteside's inlay kit to center. My "fudge" was to mark the base of the 1400, the Festool PC bushing adapter and the Whitside bushing ring so I could reassemble them in the same relative position for any future use. Then I judiciously filed the Whiteside bushing adapter so the centering mandrel supplied with the Whiteside inlay kit was fairly close to centered. The Festool demonstration representative dissassembled the base of his 1400 router and confirmed that the aluminum insert into which the Festool bushing adapters can be pushed in to mount and lock was not adjustable except by removing its mounting screws and locating pins and enlarging some of the holes to enable repositioning that aluminum mounting ring relative to the base of the router. I later contacted Festool's factory service representative who confirmed that centering accuracy was traded for speed and convenience in the design of the 1400 bushing ring mounting system, and that owner modification of the tool would be necessary improvement the alignment because Festool did not consider this a defect. I tend to disagree, because I do not understand why Festool would go to the additional expense of adding those alignment pins if the parts were not going to be precision aligned; use of the screw holes would be good enough, and arguably better for the person willing to adjust the position of the aluminum mounting ring using a centering device.
I have not tried to modify my router yet, and I suspect each Festool snap-in bushing will have its own misalignment, thus centering for a particular PC or other style or size adapter may exacerbate the misalignment when a different snap-in adapter ring is used.
Maybe someone with more influence at Festool can get a more detailed response from them on this issue. I note that my Whiteside PC adapter ring was machined with a thread OD so large it would barely fit through the aperture in the PC adapter ring supplied with mzy 1400, which gave me plenty of material to file away to enable moving the center of the Whitside ring relative to the Festool PC adapter ring. In contrast, every membr of a set of brass PC bushing rings I purchased at Woodcraft is a relativelz sloppy fit in the PC adapter ring, thus allowing the movement needed to center the bushing relative to the shaft of the router.
Dave R.
