How to Wire a motorized router lift for use in woodworking

Eagle Lake Woodworking, hosted by John Nixon, offers great do-it-yourself guides for building your own furniture, especially in the American Arts and Crafts style, and turning your garage into an amateur woodshop. Search Eagle Lake on WonderHowTo for more carpentry tutorial videos. From Eagle Lake Woodworking on this specific lesson:

If you are thinking of making your own Motorized Router Lift, this video series is for you! The electronics components are standard and can be purchased at your local electronics supply store. The basic components are - a spring-loaded activation switch, a DPDT toggle switch (wired a reversing switch), and foot pedal, and a converted powered screw driver.

Some of the benefits of a motorized router lift:

* Changing bits - my Motorized router lift is connected to a Hitachi M12V. Changing bits on this router when it's mounted in a table can be time consuming. With motorized router lift, I can drop the router down in a matter of seconds to easily change bits. The router go right back up to the ready position in seconds.

* Stopped Dados - I can start the bit in the middle of the work piece by raising it up with the lift. There's no more tilting the work piece onto a spinning bit to make a stopped dado.

* Mortising - with the modified tenon jig equipped with stop blocks, I can setup and cut reproducible mortises in no time at all. This setup is great for making matching mortises for loose tenon joinery.

* Incremental Passes - how often to you take too much off in one pass because you just don't feel like changing the bit height in between passes? With the motorized router lift, the pulse of a button on the table changes the bit height so making incremental passes is really easy.

* Cutting Circles - I made a circle jig for the router table. It's the standard pivot type affair, but I can rotate the blank while raising the bit with the foot pedal and cut a circle fast and easy.