Pin router

[Crazyraceguy]

Hand-made attachment for the router table anyway.
One of the guys in the assembly area came to me today asking if I had  way to put the grooves in the opposite side of these parts. Ah....no, but give me 10 minutes. This was a quick make-shift thing, but it works, at least for this purpose. It's not as capable as some of the factory made models, because the pin cannot be quickly tilted up to allow for inside pocketed cuts, but it literally took only minutes to build. It also was not necessary in this case.
I had one before the fire that took everything, but it has been this long (2 years as of last month) since I have needed it. I might spend a little time making it better later, but if it is that long between uses?

 

[Bob D.]

Don't know if these are still available but it looks pretty easy to make one of these.

 

[Bertotti]

Hand-made attachment for the router table anyway.
One of the guys in the assembly area came to me today asking if I had  way to put the grooves in the opposite side of these parts. Ah....no, but give me 10 minutes. This was a quick make-shift thing, but it works, at least for this purpose. It's not as capable as some of the factory made models, because the pin cannot be quickly tilted up to allow for inside pocketed cuts, but it literally took only minutes to build. It also was not necessary in this case.
I had one before the fire that took everything, but it has been this long (2 years as of last month) since I have needed it. I might spend a little time making it better later, but if it is that long between uses?

Sometimes I just don't see things correctly. I was looking at your first picture and wondering how that small silver piece on the left was holding it all in place. Doh. I did eventually see the clamps. You just have to love a simple effective jig that takes minutes to make.

 

[Packard]

About 10 years ago I read about a commercially available version.  I just looked for it and  it is the Veritas (made in Canada).

I could not find a single vendor for this, however.  I would think that rigidity would be a key factor.  That casting looks pretty rigid.  But when it comes to problem-solving, your's was johnny on the spot.
http://www.veritastools.com/Products/Page.aspx?p=212

 

[Crazyraceguy]

About 10 years ago I read about a commercially available version.  I just looked for it and  it is the Veritas (made in Canada).

I could not find a single vendor for this, however.  I would think that rigidity would be a key factor.  That casting looks pretty rigid.  But when it comes to problem-solving, your's was johnny on the spot.
http://www.veritastools.com/Products/Page.aspx?p=212

That and one other I saw one time that was made with square steel tubing are the commercially made units that I have seen. From what I recall, they are fairly expensive, which is fine if you use it frequently enough. Rigidity was the reason that I used a piece that was 3.25" wide and tried to keep it as low/close to the material as I could. The parts I needed to cut were 12" wide, so that arm was sticking out there quite a bit. The cut was just over 1/4" wide and only about 3/16" deep. I used a brand new 1/4" down spiral bit, so the cut pressure wasn't much. It worked out well.

 

[Bob D.]

The one shown in the video I posted is $40 and still available today apparently. I wouldn't call that expensive but I have no idea what the quality level of the thing is.

And it looks easy enough to roll you own version with a MIG welder, a bit of steel, and a push/pull type toggle clamp.

 

[Packard]

I do wonder what the price of the Veritas unit is.  Is that a casting?  Or is it a big piece of plastic?  Can't tell from the photo. 

But for once in a while job, the improvised jig is nice and I am impressed.

I probably would have cut the grooves with a dado head and some sort of indexing pin on the table saw.  If I indexed off the same end of the board then both sides would be identical. 

On the second thought, I have a radial arm saw.  That would be easier to index. 

I rarely use my router for dados.  I don't know why though.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

What I did, for this quicky, was add that second block to the side. Then two screws hold the main arm in place. One is very near the back, beyond the side block. That way, I could remove the front screw and rotate the arm, being fairly sure that it would return to the same place. It doesn't solve the vertical movement, but I didn't need that in this case.

I'm pretty sure that the Varitas unit is a casting and if I remember right it was around $200? but that was years ago. With all of the Festool stuff I have, I certainly couldn't call that expensive with a straight face, but for such a seldom used tool?
If I can find the pics, it will have the date for when I made the first one. I would guess at least 4 years?

Good guess, it will be 4 years in December. These were slightly different. They were blind grooves, so the shelves were not removable, and they were only about half the depth. There were thousands of them though. 4500? something silly like that. This entire room was filled with these little slots, floor to ceiling. They were very tricky to assemble, since the vertical members were vey flimsy until the spaces were filled with the shelf pieces.

 

[JonathanJung]

Nice jig. I assume that the next time, it would be better to simply cut the dados on both sides of the material?

How is a pin router for rigidity? Is it easy to push the pin off center and get a wonky cut?

And man, all those cubbies...dusting nightmare!

 

[Packard]

Grizzly makes one of the more inexpensive pin routers ($3,500.00).  But even at that level, the overhead arm is substantial.
https://www.grizzly.com/products/gr...MIsrnLy7GG8wIVrMiUCR2RrQFgEAQYAyABEgLodPD_BwE

 

[Dogberryjr]

I do wonder what the price of the Veritas unit is.  Is that a casting?  Or is it a big piece of plastic?  Can't tell from the photo. 

It's cast metal, aluminum, I think. It weighs about five pounds as I recall.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Nice jig. I assume that the next time, it would be better to simply cut the dados on both sides of the material?

How is a pin router for rigidity? Is it easy to push the pin off center and get a wonky cut?

And man, all those cubbies...dusting nightmare!

The dados were done on the one side with a CNC machine, which requires this type of a cut to be done as a "second operation". This means perfectly re-registering the parts, one at a time. When they were cut originally, there were at least 4 (maybe 5?) per sheet. That second operation, done one at a time was extremely slow in comparison to the first side. If I remember right, they tried to do it that way originally and had problems with registration and/or movement of the parts on the vacuum table?
Plus the time was cutting into the regular production schedule. They could run the first side from full sheets 4-5 at a time, stack them on a cart and continue with regular production. They came to me and the pin router made them exactly opposite. There were so many that I went through several bits doing it, but they came out great. They were much shallower, I think the cut I did was only about 6 inches, so the arm was much shorter too. I never had any flew/movement problems with that set-up.

Those little cubbies were made to hold hard drives in an evidence locker. That's why they were so small.