Corona MFT build.

[Firebrick43]

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I started building this bench 2 years ago and got busy with life and other projects. Well the wuhan/ corona virus panic of 2020 is going to allow me lots of time to finish it.

So as seen above I have bought a six pack of Corona, a juicy lime, and back to work, hopefully finish it.

I have what I think is a novel way of dealing with the track like no other has done!

lilscorpions mft table really got me hooked. Hard to believe it was four years ago but here is the table he built.

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3913069&postcount=561

My table is radically different but was inspired by it.

The semi completed base carcass.
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Biggest thing for me is the storage. The two sides have shelves to store hdx parts organizers.

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The whole thing is made from Baltic birch ply. The shelves 1/2"(12mm) and the carcass 3/4" (18mm). I works wonderfully.

The shelves have thin oak runners housed in a shallow dado. They prevent wear to the ply face and after waxed are nearly as slick as slides. The top shelf is larger than the other ones and will eventually have ply boxes made to store my doweling jigs/dowels and pocket hole jigs/screws.

The main back bone has some dados as well for alignment but is mainly pocket screwed and glued together. I hate the look of exposed pocket screw so areas such as the side panels are reinforced with through dowels that are cut off with a flush cut saw after the glue dries. It's faster and visually appealing compared to plugged pocket screw holes.

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[Firebrick43]

View media item 83828 This end will be drawers for storage.

View media item 83827Router end. Middle top is access to the router. Below will be a drawer for my plunge and fixed base router. The two skinny side pockets will house pull out shelves for bits, bushings, and other accessories.

The top frame work uses no pocket screws and is nearly all dadoed and rebbeted for alignment and strength. Corners and one cross brace is through doweled.
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This end is where the big Milwaukee router will go.
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View media item 83831I highly recommend the Jessem doweling jig. It's awesome and quick, accurate, and easy to use.

 

[LS6 Tommy]

Very nice project!

You do realize that if you drink that stuff with fruit added you get Coronavirus AND Lyme disease...

Tommy

 

[Firebrick43]

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The drawers were finger jointed Baltic birch. Used an Incra IBox jig to do it and the Unisaw. The slides are pro 100s off of amazon and the fronts 12mm Baltic birch. The pulls are walnut with brass threaded inserts. Really spent to much time on them as they are way to complicated. Lots of bandsaw time and 10 times as much with a rasp and sandpaper cleaning them up.

Everything coated in 6+ coats of clear shellac.

 

[Firebrick43]

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I chose an incra router plate. Really like the steel throat plates and how they snap in magnetically. As with all my other incra products it is well made however I am disappointed in it anodizing. I have been involved in anodizing so I know there is a thousand ways to screw it up but still when you pay incra prices I would expect it to be flawless. They Ibox i bought had some minor finish issues as well(deburr knife scratches and places that were not deburred) . I chose the biggest and baddest router available. The Milwaukee 5625!
Now it may seem expensive but the 5625 has a lift built into the base itself so you don’t have to purchase a separate lift to get above table adjustment. The incra plate I bought is the same one as the 7518 porter cable(the other big boy of routers) but you have to drill the hole fore the adjustment wrench your self. I still need to do so.

 

[rieferman]

Great build!!!

 

[Firebrick43]

Very nice project!

You do realize that if you drink that stuff with fruit added you get Coronavirus AND Lyme disease...

Tommy

Shush you! Idiots will believe it and Corona and lime farmers will be out of business. They say corona sales are already 40% down due to people associating it with the virus. Probably same idiots spraying bleach in their mouth or hoard a pallet load of toilet paper.

 

[LS6 Tommy]

Shush you! Idiots will believe it and Corona and lime farmers will be out of business. They say corona sales are already 40% down due to people associating it with the virus. Probably same idiots spraying bleach in their mouth or hoard a pallet load of toilet paper.

Well, if Corona made good beer it wouldn't be so believable.

JK. I'm surprised it's been such a problem for them. Usually even bad press is good for sales.

Tommy

 

[matt_i]

Great job, I can tell you have a lot of time into it!

Is the hole pattern in the top for a fence system or for bench-dogs?

 

[Firebrick43]

The top is 3/4” MDF. It’s purple or plum brand or something like that. What ever my local supplier said was the best MDF that was made. While I think it’s appropriate here I still hate it and will never use it for cabinets or such. I used woodpecker hole making jig to place and bore the 20mm holes in the same spacing Festool uses. It was a one time tool when I bought it but seems to have been popular enough to make it a full time product
View media item 101824Sorry I didn’t get a pic when I did it.

View media item 101827I chamfered the holes with a colt palm router and a 45 degree white side bit. I can’t recommend the whiteside bits enough, well worth the coin compared to the cheapies.

The colt is a decent router but it’s adjustment screw leaves something do be desired! Can you spot the holes chamfer I screwed up! It’s still better than the Dewalt or portercable trim routers that I have used.

Note with MDF you need to rout things twice! It compresses and then expands. So you need to rout the holes with the jig and before moving it wait a few mins and run the router through them again. If you don’t the holes will be to tight for the dogs.

The top is retained by 1/4-20 flat head screws counter sunk into the top just below the surface. Inserts are placed into the top of the frame work to accept the bolts. Getting to holes lined up has been the biggest pain of the project.

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As carefully as I was the bottom frame work is not going to be perfectly flat. There were one or two high areas that were sanded down. After the top was bolted down initially a 24” flat edge was placed and feeler gages used to note low areas. Blue painters tape was applied to the top edge of the pulk style under box to build them up. A router table should be flat or slightly convex. It should NEVER be concave or it cause all kinds of issues with the cut. This table is FLAT in the middle 24” and tapers off a few thousands at the 6” at the edge.

 

[Firebrick43]

Well, if Corona made good beer it wouldn't be so believable.

JK. I'm surprised it's been such a problem for them. Usually even bad press is good for sales.

Tommy

I am not really much of a beer drinker and find other alcohol types to be disgusting. I might drink a six pack of coors light in a month. I do find corona to be exceptionally bad tasting unless you add a good juicy lime
The only beer I think to be outstanding is hoffbrauhaus at the brewery, the bottles version I thinks gets skunked crossing the Atlantic. If they had a hoffbrauhaus in town I might become a stuck and would be broke and fat eating all that sauerkraut and weissworst.

 

[Firebrick43]

Great job, I can tell you have a lot of time into it!

Is the hole pattern in the top for a fence system or for bench-dogs?

Both! I am going to assume by your question you have not seen a Festool MFT/3 in action? Youtube is a great place to learn about it. I don’t have a single piece of Festool equipment but I like the idea behind their system. I have a Dewalt tracksaw that will be used on this bench.

 

[Firebrick43]

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At this point I attached the 80/20 brand extrusions. Don’t remember the exact number but they are 10 series 2” tall and 1/2” thick. They are attached with 10-24 countersunk SS Allen bolts with nuts on the other side. They were drilled on my newly restored delta dp220 with a Vfd. The custom drill press table with fence and the bed made drilling the holes accurately a breeze. The vFD allowed for such as slow speed that the countersink was pleasant to use instead of a worrying about burning it up and chatter.

If you notice there is small numbers buy the screws. Again working in wood is rarely perfect so I measures and wrote the thousands number on the face. Removed the extrusion and taped the appropriate amount of shim stock to the back and now it’s dead straight.

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Before the extrusions were removed for shimming the end outer edges were marked. I was extremely careful in cutting the top straight and square so the hole pattern came out the same. But I cut it oversize and planned to trim it to width after the extrusions were fitted. So here I am cutting the top with my track saw to the marks after the extrusion is removed for shimming. The edge is cut back about .010” from flush so the extrusion just barely extends past the top. The edges are chamfered after cutting.

Note, I wish I had made the top pulk style frame an inch taller so the extrusion didn’t over hang the port slightly. The extrusion has a nice smooth edge so it doesn’t hurt a thing except my aesthetic sensibilities.

 

[santagary]

ha, ha....that's the only news that's cheered me up today...ha, ha!

 

[Lucky13driver]

Man nice work. You can tell you cared about the details.

 

[Ryan]

FANTASTIC build.

 

[Firebrick43]

Well I got 4 coats of shellac on the top. Two coats, sand with 400 and two more. Going to have to wait till tomorrow for more Boy does MDF absorb it! View media item 101832

FANTASTIC build.

thank you, I think you may really find the next part interesting.

 

[Firebrick43]

The Festool MFT/3 is a tool of many compromises. Really meant for on-site fine carpentry but equally suited to the limited space craftsman it light and portable which also means small and some what rickety. Now these two attributes really is not a dis or bad per say, just a compromise as all engineered products are. Ryan, lilscorpion, a few hundred on the Festool group have made similar but customized benches to solve the light and rickety(but now heavy and stationary. However it is of my opinion that the fence hinge ***** and is just terrible engineering. You have to remove the saw, hold flip the fence up, position the wood, flip the fence down, then place the saw back on the track.

Dino over at eureka zone came up with a bridge but I don’t want his whole system with it and there is quality issues. One gentleman came up with a 80/20 linear guide to lift the track a fix distance but you would have to adjust it each time you change thickness of materials on both sides of the bench.

I came up with this.
It’s an SMC air cylinder unitized with two linear guide bearings rods. View media item 101837
It’s MCQL20-50-xc18

MCQ is the series. L stands for linear ball guides(G is a Teflon style guide and I think would be perfectly suitable). 20 stands for 20mm bore (air cylinder bore) and 50 is 50mm stroke. Now you can get these smaller and bigger bore as well as longer and shorter stroke. I picked 20mm bore not because the power would be necessary but because the linear guide rods are substantial enough to the forces I believe would be exposed. You don’t want much bigger bore for reasons I will explain later. The 50mm stroke give almost 2” material capacity which I will never use but you can get longer 75 or 100mm stroke ones but be careful for reasons again I will explain later.

 

[Firebrick43]

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These two cylinders came as a pair off eBay for 50$ shipped. They were like new or maybe even NOS. Retail cost would be in the 300$+ range.

I made the mounts out of 1/2” thick x 4” wide aluminum. The saw track mounts are 4” long and the cylinder mount 4-1/2” long(running width wise). I used three 1/4 “ dowels on the cylinder mounts for location and 2 3/8 dowels step turned to .260” for the saw track. I spot drilled everything on my little atlas MFC mill for position and then drilled, reamed for dowels and counter bored for the cylinder screws on the delta dp shown. Reamers and counter bores were bought years ago in sets on eBay used in good condition for little more than 1 reamer or counterbore new. Did I mention I buy lots off eBay.

View media item 101839All the dowels are loctite in with green 640 but red would work as well for these stress levels. I don’t have a set of over/under reamers so the are on size and therefore not quite a press fit but did need to be tapped in

 

[Firebrick43]

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View media item 101836Bottom of saw track

 

[Miss the Pontiacs]

That is one fine piece of furniture, oops I mean shop equipment.

 

[Firebrick43]

Now you may think I am going to use a compressor and valve to raise and lower the cylinders, I am not. You certainly could and it would be cheaper but you would have to hook up air every time and there would be a ounce hazard as well as the possibility of damage to the track or 80/20 as these are quite powerful cylinders. We use similar cylinders at work(Festo) for robot grippers. I don’t think it would take more than 5psi or so for this application and therefor the bench would need a regulator. I would recommend if you do so don’t use power down just up and install a sintered filter as I have on the retract port

I am making a self contained system with a foot pedal. At first I was going to use a large spring returned Bimba cylinder under the bench and design a bell-crank and pedal. But then while flipping through the SMC carol oh I had an epiphany. Just mount a pedal onto a dual piston cylinder and mount it to the side of the bench.

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So I Tiged this up real quick. Could have used some wood to do so as well which I debated for a while. I need to take a gray scotchbrite and clean the weldment up

 

[Firebrick43]

The foot pedal cylinder is a cxsm25-75.

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Quite different than the others. This cylinder is actually 2 air cylinders. It also has linear bearing but instead of being separate of the cylinder rod they are one and the same. So this has a little less side to side rigidity but this matters little for how I am going to use this.

Now the model number breaks down similarly to above in that it has a 25mm bore(x2) and a 75mm stroke. Now if we were using this to pump a non compressible liquid such as water or oil we would be over sized 37 cc x 2 equals 74cc vs ~16cc x 2 equals 32cc. Since air is compressible I hope this is over double capacity is able to lift the saw and track.

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Well that is all tonight. We will see how things go as it might take some time to get some fittings, some 80/20 series 10 nuts in 1/4-20 and some 1/4 steel tubing depending on what open or if the state goes into lockdown.

I have Baltic birch and slide for the sliding router bit rack that is going on the other side and need to start planning the router fence

 

[4miller1]

That looks great.
Your doing a really nice job.
Thanks for sharing.

 

[NUTTSGT]

A very nice build, way beyond my skill level.

 

[Firebrick43]

While the top was off for finishing I am showing the blue tape shims to level out the top. Also you can see the inserts used with the bolts.
View media item 101919The top reattached after 8 coats of shellac rubbed out with OOOO steel wool/Johnson’s paste wax. It came out striped because well it’s mdf. I should of maybe rubbed the first coat out with an alcohol soaked rag? Anyways I resisted stripping it off because it is just a bench. It’s very smooth and glue shouldn’t stick to it.
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[Firebrick43]

Here is the 80/20 extrusion I picked up some some time ago for a router fence. I wanted a tall fence. Do you think it’s substantial enough?
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I used a hole saw rough this cavity out. I guided it with a board that had been previously hole sawed. Then used the next larger hole saw on another board and clamped it to the extrusion. A fixed base router and a long pattern bit (with bearing on top) to rout it to final size. Dust/chip collection will be through the extrusion to the far end.
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[Firebrick43]

Didn’t want to wait on some nuts so I machined some.
View media item 101975Cylinder mounted on extrusion.
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What’s up with all the spam all the sudden?

 

[Firebrick43]

Cut the track down to length
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Attached the track to the mounts and it very stable
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[Firebrick43]

Now I need some opinions for the saw fence.

I am thinking of using incra t track plus as a fence. Low profile and has scales but not the rack positioners

Or a full out incra fence with shop stop?

Or some 80/20

Maybe just make 5 well fitting dogs? These are the ones from the hole making jig
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Any other ideas?

 

[gnpenning]

Shop stop.


Very nice ��.

 

[Firebrick43]

dust collection started

3” pvc. I really should have done this when the base was being built, it was hell working back a narrow cavity.

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[Firebrick43]

Pull out shelves will store router bits in blocks , throat plates and other router accessories. Left one shorter due to dust collection behind it. View media item 102260
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View media item 102267Making some wuhan virus face shields for the wife’s hospital. Need to make a stand and enclosure for the printer instead of sitting on the bench.

 

[Firebrick43]

Pretty unhappy with the red woodpeckers dogs that came with their square. The were loose in my table and their own square. Machine 6 long ones with .787” shanks and 1” heads. 6 more with shanks just shorter than the MDF top and tapped with 1/4-20 and 4 short headed ones for under the track.

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They form the fence until I get the incra track

 

[Woodtick]

Awesome build,well done.

 

[Firebrick43]

I have installed the finished doors on the router side. The opening will have a front and an angled plate to divert sawdust to the port.

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On an organization stand point I dont have a CNC vertical mill like Lil Scorpion to mill organizers out of HDPE but I do have a 3d printer. I have had if for a year and this is the best print to date.

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It keeps all the different size drills and inserts to my jessem jig organized and greatly helps as it was alway a pain to store.

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This is the first print I had done multiple colors on and it worked out very well. It also, like tool control foam, shows if one is missing. While this is pretty unnecessary in this application it has helped my skills grow. I modeled the part in Fusion 360 which I am learning now. I was used to autocad and its clones but this program was entirely different and has a completely different process(sketches). But I am catching on finally. I didn't get any where for maybe a year with it and a few months ago I set down and watched tutorials all weekend during a snow storm. Today I learned how to take a picture and enter it into the program(canvas). You can calibrate the image to a known dimension and then sketch off of that. I made doing the profile very easy and quick.
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Since I can not print something this big I actually designed in a dove tail joint which worked very well.

Two small shims lock the print into the drawer and nothing moves around. I did forget to print in a profile for the allen key to adjust the collars.

 

[Jeff Ivers]

This is a very impressive build. Your fabrication skills are superb in both wood and metal. My poor shop has never even seen a piece of baltic birch plywood. I am curious about the purpose of the oval "portholes" around the perimeter of your top. What are they for?

 

[Firebrick43]

Jeff, its access to the bottom of the dog holes. The dogs are threaded and can be "clamped" in place by adding a knob underneath. Things like clamps can also be placed in the dog holes and again retained with knobs underneath.

 

[Jeff Ivers]

Jeff, its access to the bottom of the dog holes. The dogs are threaded and can be "clamped" in place by adding a knob underneath. Things like clamps can also be placed in the dog holes and again retained with knobs underneath.

Thank you for the clarification. That makes perfect sense. When I saw the holes, I just assumed they were for the press in dogs/clamps.

 

[eastbaysubaru]

Absolutely amazing build. I'm not sure I have the skills to pull off something this clean/elaborate, but I love looking and dreaming. Thanks for documenting it so well!

-Brian