Purchasing new hand held router and bits soon, what is best?

[Thad]

First off, I am sure this topic has been discussed and if it has please share with me the topic or link to read with out bothering you all about this again...

We are a 25 year old cabinet shop that has taken on fabricating its own tops about a year ago. We have always done our own templates and installs but decided to bring it all in house to better run our scheduling and calendar as we install everything we manufacture also.

We are in the market for our first hand held router and bits for profiled edges. We are looking at getting set up for the following edges all for 3CM tops.
F30 = Ogee edge, F20 = Bevel edge, L20 = Cove edge and V30 = Bullnose edge.

Wanting to know what routers and tooling has worked best for you guys? I personally think we want to go with the 5-6 position setups so the router is doing most of the work instead of a lot of freehand polishing? Looking for input here though!! We have looked at so far the Master 3500 from Regent, the Red ripper JR and SR from Omega, and the Mach 5. For tooling we have looked at the Diasant Blue bits from Regent, the Apexx tooling form Lackmond, the ADI series tooling from Granquartz.

Eased edge will still be our predominant edge offering. We process around 12-15 slabs a month mainly tops for our own cabinetry and some other tops. We cut probably 70% quartz and 30% natural stone not sure if that has any bearing on what tooling is used for profiling? We cut everything with our AccuGlide saw and rails and do sinks with our Sink Bull. We have an Anderson CNC router in the cabinet shop for making our plywood sink templates and other odd shape templates for the Sink Bull to do curved islands and other misc. shapes etc.

Any feedback on hand held routers, tooling, and advice on what to do and not to do will be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Kowboy]

I'd scour the ads and lowball someone on a used one to start.

[Alex DiPietro]

on a hand router anything beyond Position 2 is a waste of time.

[ZackaryC]

I second Alex's comments

[Thad]

Thanks for the feedback so far from those above.

Who on here is using the Mach 5 or Red Ripper JR for edge profiling and what tooling are you using with them?

Thanks.

[Andy Ross]

I have a mach 3 from years ago. Works great...I would recommend it. For bits, we liked the adi bits. I would avoid cove and ogee at all costs and stick with eased, 1/4 bevel and full bullnose. Ogee and cove will take a long time to machine and a long time to get right with hand polishing. Sell what makes you money. Most people will go with what you recommend.

[Thad]

Andy,

Thanks for the feedback. The mach 5 looks like it is easy to control and move around compared to some of the larger routers. Is yours the electric or air version? The ADI tooling from what my research has told me looks to be great quality. Glad to hear you had success with it. We are obviously pushing eased edge and will continue to do so. We have a couple jobs coming up that they are insisting on an Ogee edge for the island etc. so are having to move into that.

Thanks again for the reply.

[T_Kiwi]

Did you know Ghines invented the router for the stone industry, just saying

[UnitedMarble]

We have a Master 3500 that sits on a shelf. Great machine for profiles we don't tool up for on CNC. We use ADI tooling. Like Alex said, anything beyond position 2 is a waste of time and money.

[Thad]

Thanks for the reply John.

So to summarize from the previous reply's, thanks again for those of you who took your time to chime in.

Your guys recommendations would be to use the following process:

1. Use of a Frangistone or Razorstone type stacked blade tooling for roughing out the profile.
2. Then a segmented position O bit
3. Then position 1 bit
4. Then position 2 bit
5. Then forget the position 3-6 bits that some of these companies are pushing and just hand polish our ass off from there with our normal progression of polishing pads and steps that we would do with our standard eased edge?

Side note: in my research there is no need to adjust the depth of the router base from step to step? The compensation is in the tooling from position 0 through positions 2? Correct?

[Andy Ross]

Some bits need to be adjusted, some don't.

[olesmokin]

Hercules Router has been good for me and is not overly expensive

[NaturalMAG]

The Company that Originally produced the Hurricane Mach 5 is no more (family owned company that sold), there are some knock offs/clones out there (ecoedge, have not tried it), but as far as a small light weight router, you could go for the Omega Diamond Red Ripper Ultralight, or one of the few out there that take a grinder in place of a fixed motor. The trade off is that instead of having a motor serviced you can just replace the variable speed grinder. I don't believe they can be the work horse you may need, but they are light enough (normally from 11-20 lbs) to even take onsite if you HAD to.

[todd.johnson]

Glad to hear the Hercules made the list. I have thousands of customers that have used these for years. We offer two positions and most of the time only sell position 1. People hand polish after that. Breaker bits are used to prolong the life of the bit. Our Viper bits have 6mm of material full of quality diamonds.
Our router is $1995 and the bits average $275
Call me if you need more information.
Thanks olesmokin for the comment.