Making the Router Decision: Rated Amperage + Job Requirements?

[Garrett French]

I posted in the toolcrib blog this morning about making a router decision... my main point was:

"Your best bet will be to gauge the KIND of work you intend to do with a particular router and fit that to a rated amperage."

Do you guys agree?

How have you made your router decisions in the past?

Here's the post:
http://www.toolcrib.com/blog/2007/02...ated-amperage/

disclosure - we are Rockler affiliates + I will be linking to this thread from my blog, but won't quote anyone directly in my post without permission

G

[Frank Pellow]

Garrett, after more than a year of consideration on what router (if any) to purchase for a router table, I made my decision to purchase a Triton 2.25 peek hp router based both upon reading several reviews and by conducting a hands-on stress test. See the thread: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/...ead.php?t=1521

[Garrett French]

this is great stuff Frank - thank you

I hadn't heard of Triton before but will check out the review you linked to.

G

[Vaughn McMillan]

Garrett, I think your advice is sound. The rated "horsepower" is usually more nebulous than the amperage rating, and as you noted, they make different sized routers for dfferent applications. That's why a number of woodworkers end up with a stable full of routers.

(BTW, the links on your blog pointing to the Rockler articles are not working. The first one's trying to pull up a page via FTP, and the second is pointing to a Javascript void.)

[tod evans]

garrett, not just routers but ALL tools should be evaluated by the motor type and amperage draw.....routers are a slightly different animal in that they scream as far as rpm`s go......but gauging power by amperage is a very good way to determine whether or not a router will do what is required of it...
in todays market there are lots of "bells-n-whistles" built into routers to make them more "user friendly".........lots of these are much more friendly to the manufacturers bottom line that the end user!
before joe goes and drops his hard earned money on a router motor he should learn what type of router he needs......then he`ll need to know that he`ll spend far more on tooling than the router cost!.......he should make sure that whatever accessories he plans to use will work with the router he chooses......some require funky addaptors to use various accessories.....tod

[Garrett French]

hey Vaughn that ftp link actually goes right into a text-looking page... it's weird looking but works for me on firefox....

(scratch that actually - I went back and found in my code that I'd left a space after a " that was messing the link up... fixed now . the link does work though...)

it's pretty cool stuff, probably old hat for most folks here but worth a peek because it's the motors that make the blades go round: "frequently asked questions about electric motors."
ftp://ftp.cs.rochester.edu/pub/archi...oodwork-motors

and thank you - I bungled the link to the rockler blog post.

This link here is a straight, unaffiliated link (no tracking... ie we get no money if someone clicked through and then suddenly decided to buy a new tables saw) to rockler if anyone's interested in seeing the post:
http://www.rockler.com/blog/index.cfm?CommentID=160

Tod - thanks for the brain expander. (ouch! I hadn't yet made the leap from amperage being important across tools, not just for routers.

Your points about accessory cost is good, and the compatibility issue.