Making the router quieter by slowing down rpm's??

[hammerhead]

if you turn the speed down on a porter cable one notch how fast is it still spinning (rpm's) and does it make it much quieter?? thanks

[Wdyasq@yahoo.com]

The 7518 P-C shows speeds of 21,000; 19,000; 16,000; 13,000 and 10,000. I doubt they are accurate. The bit engaging the wood makes a lot of the noise. Some bits make less noise than others.

I have always thought one could build a sound box around the router and kill most of the noise. As long as the air inlet did not restrict the airflow and the exhause was not restricted, the router should not overheat.

I have no idea - outside of Noise Cancelling Electronics - that will kill the sound of the bit cutting.

Ron

[Gerald D]

Spiral bits are much quieter than straight flutes - the good news.

Spiral bits are more expensive and more difficult to sharpen - the bad news.

[Gerald D]

To answer hammerhead's original question, my experience is that the noise level does not reduce significantly. The frequency (pitch) of the noise drops and this can be more irritating, depending on what else is triggered into resonance.

On the side; our human body's irritation with noise and vibration is very specific at certain frequencies. These frequencies coincide with our human parts going into resonance with the source of the "noise". A steering wheel shimmy is bad when our arm muscles start shaking about. A bumpy road is bad when our stomach starts bouncing up and down. The point about mentioning this, is that each of us has a different response to noise - depending on the size of our muscles, stomaches etc. So, a neighbour (wife?) complaining about your SB router noise could be more sensitive to the frequency rather than the volume. Also, what you think sounds better, actually sounds worse to the next guy. Measuring in dB is not the final answer.