Poor man's aggregate?

[Jeremy Schiffer]

Well, it has happened... I have a need to drill holes sideways (y direction) into 1/8" thick plastic.

I'm fairly sure the CS41-48 can't hold an aggregate head... seems like Thermwood said this originally. Correct me if I'm wrong!

What I'm thinking of doing is buying a cheap lightweight air drill and constructing a mount to attach it to the router to enable me to drill these holes.

Anyone had any experience doing something like this? What would be the weight limit that the CS41-48 can hold? I expect the drill and mount would weigh probably 5-8 lbs total.

Any advice/warnings from Thermwood or anyone else on the feasability of this?

Thanks in advance!

[Neville Bastian]

Hey Jeremy, Any chance of having a photo of what you are going to do.
The normal Aggregates have the problem of not enough space to drop low enough due to the spoil board.
That makes me think I have have a 1997 point to point you can buy if you want it. That is a joke.

I guess you have seen those 90 degree portable drill attachments. Holding them in the correct direction maybe a difficult one.


Regards

Neville

[Jeremy Schiffer]

Hi Neville... I'll attach a photo of the end view of this thing. It's a hollow channel, 8 feet long. Along its length, every 25mm or so are holes drilled through (indicated here by the red lines.)

The part is too tall to stand up under the gantry, so it must lay flat and be drilled from the side.

An aggregate, even if my machine will hold it, is pretty much out of the question due to the price. It'd take forever and a day for this job to pay for it.

However, I can get a pneumatic drill and chuck a bit into it, and mount it to the side of the router to drill the holes... ASSUMING that my particular router (CS41) can handle the weight, which shouldn't be more than 5-8 lbs. I haven't seen any information in the manual about the weight capacity of the Z axis. I'd really like to hear Thermwood's opinion on this, they know the structural capacity of the machine, and I sure as heck don't want to exceed it.

endview2.jpg (40.55 KiB) Viewed 2613 times