Dewalt 611 Speed?

I’ve been running my router at max speed on the dial and have finally realized that is probably a bad idea and not needed.

With that said - what should I set the dial on the router for the speed? Right now I’m only cutting on wood (not metal or other material), typically is pine or MDF. Is there a chart to reference when cutting different materials on the speed you should set your router?

Minimum speed (16k RPM) will be plenty for most wood work, higher RPM is best catered for small diameter/detail bit work.

My Makita does 10k minimum and this will also be ast enough for a lot of wood work. The key is machine rigidity and chip thickness per tooth/revolution. With those in check you can play with RPM/feed rate to maintain an appropriate “slice thickness”.

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Ok, I wish I had looked into this sooner, my mistake for not doing the research. I had no idea you could run it at the slowest speed.

When doing detail work with say a 1/32 size bit - take it up to 50% speed or how fast should you run it in that scenario?

There is no bit you would be using with a rating that is going to require anything higher that 1 on the dial.
Anything higher is just wearing out your brushes quicker.

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Thank you, that is tremendously helpful to confirm what I was wondering. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

My thoughts on this don’t seem to be the popular ones here, but don’t forget that you can increase your feedrate if you increase your router speed and maintain the same chipload. There is also less cutting force when you increase RPMs.
Those concerned with brush life might consider a filter over the router (an old sock is known to work).

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Indeed, I have carved plenty of times at 27k RPM myself but upping the feed rate to maintain chipload. But rigidity of the machine come into play fast. I also use a screw-based machine myself, not 5mm belts…

Datron create some brilliant end mills and their target RPM is 45k, so it all depends.
But for a hobby machine such as the Xcarve 16K RPM will be plenty for 95% of the work :slight_smile:

Luckily you didn’t damage anything other than unnecessary he brushes, but that’s like excess tire wear. Not a huge problem, but annoying, to replace. But yeah mostly I do 1 occasionally will go to 1.5-2 if I get a little chatter.