Have been reading some older books and looking at other info, I know the router lift is a relatively recent item here in the UK but had not realised how much earlier it had been around in the states before it came here and it has more history than I had realised. I suppose it was an obvious design for the Americans because they had routers like the 3 ¼ Hp porter cable 7518 which did not have fixed bases and so could be easily clamped into a router lift whilst we over here had the fixed base plunge router.
The early designs seem to be from Woodpecker who used a chain and sprocket arrangement, Jessem who used a toothed belt and Benchdog who used a substantial cast iron mount with two columns running bronze bushes with an ACME lead screw, if you look at this article ProLift Router Lift PL1001 - FineWoodworking you can see they had set the future trend for the modern lift where we now have linear bearings and a lead screw but use billet aluminium. I think the Benchdog brand is now part of Rockler.
Now in engineering design you don’t want to re-invent the wheel, you need to learn from other people’s mistakes so you don’t repeat them and keep it simple which made me think of the post on these forums about issues with the UJK router lift, the one that uses chains and sprockets. They obviously did not do their homework and have ended up where companies like Jessem and Woodpecker started their design evolution a long time back and maybe in time we will see a UJK lift without chain & sprocket arrangement. I cannot really see much more room for big advances in lift technology but I wonder if any of them will decide to make the motor assembly part of the lift itself, so the clamp becomes the motor body. Having fewer parts fixed together must increase the long term accuracy and by combining systems can lead to being more economic to produce.
The early designs seem to be from Woodpecker who used a chain and sprocket arrangement, Jessem who used a toothed belt and Benchdog who used a substantial cast iron mount with two columns running bronze bushes with an ACME lead screw, if you look at this article ProLift Router Lift PL1001 - FineWoodworking you can see they had set the future trend for the modern lift where we now have linear bearings and a lead screw but use billet aluminium. I think the Benchdog brand is now part of Rockler.
Now in engineering design you don’t want to re-invent the wheel, you need to learn from other people’s mistakes so you don’t repeat them and keep it simple which made me think of the post on these forums about issues with the UJK router lift, the one that uses chains and sprockets. They obviously did not do their homework and have ended up where companies like Jessem and Woodpecker started their design evolution a long time back and maybe in time we will see a UJK lift without chain & sprocket arrangement. I cannot really see much more room for big advances in lift technology but I wonder if any of them will decide to make the motor assembly part of the lift itself, so the clamp becomes the motor body. Having fewer parts fixed together must increase the long term accuracy and by combining systems can lead to being more economic to produce.
