CNC Shark Forum

I did the spindle thing on my Shark. I spent goofy amounts of time researching my decisions. You know the story! It went pretty well. Some notes follow. First, I've had it with all the junk routers. I measured many new Bosch 1617's and the tolerances on them these days is poor. Emails to Bosch were ...

I measured a fourth Bosch 1617. Same poor result. I had thought that unit might be a solution. I was hoping to snag an older display model from a nearby hardware store, but the display model was very new. I also measured a display Porter Cable 892. It measured poorly. Those are also much louder than...

Well, I took my Noga mag base, a couple of test indicators, a pair of big clamps, and some other goodies down to Menards to measure some more routers for runout. I have an Interapid .0005" and a mitutoyo .0001". There were two remaining 1617's on the shelf. One was an open box. I setup in an aisle t...

I have read some other reports of similar issues. I ran the router for about 15 minutes. The temp eventually stabilized. Still quite warm, especially the shaft and collet. I have changed the bearings in a 1617 before. One of the weaknesses is the top assembly. It's pretty much just a bunch of plasti...

I've been using a new Porter Cable 892 router for the past year or so. It has worked fine, but a machine move has necessitated the purchase of a new router. So I purchased a Bosch 1617 over the weekend and have begun to measure it to see whether I received a good one. Initial runout measurements in ...

I had this same problem very recently. My X axis quit working in the middle of a job. Fortunately that operation was at the end of the job and it did not produce a crash, etc. It was a very short job, about 2 minutes long. I'd run a few of those jobs but had not been using the machine hard. It was n...

Very nice!

I wonder if you could tuck some hatchback style cylinders along the edge to neutralize the weight? Of course that isn't very far from some actuator cylinders to open it by push button. Especially if you have shop air.

Get well!

The Porter Cable 892 router has a push button to lock the collet. I think you could fairly easily hold that button in with a heavy rubber band, or velcro. Put the bit in, and rotate the nut by hand until the bit is retained. Then operate the wrench.

I'd like to install some stiff brushes to clean the grooves of the screws in the Shark. Especially the Y screw, which is buried under the machine. I am wondering if the screws that hold the little cover plate on, where the screw enters the bearing, could be removed to afix a brush. Or would removing...

The Dupont teflon silicone is a popular product for lubing the Shark. This is typically carried by Lowes at $3.98, but not Home Depot or Menards. Unfortunately Lowes no longer seems to be carrying the product and it is not available for order. They still carry "DuPont Teflon Multi-Use Lubricant". Th...