On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:55:10 -0800, mac davis
wrote:

Can the router be damaged by the reduction from the dimmer switch?

How many possible variations of dimmer and router are you concerned
about ? 8-(

There's a problem in running any motor at low speeds, in that the heat
dumped into the motor for a given torque will rise. If you throttle
the motor back, and a high load slows it even further, then you have a
risk of overheating.

There's also the waveform issue. Simple dimmers work by phase control.
Their output wavefom becomes "spiky", which means there's an added
high-frequency component. Electric motor windings don't care for this,
and again there's more heating going on.

So you can run a motor with a dimmer, but you need to de-rate it for
useful power and to watch the temperature of the windings.


With a drill, the use of a speed control might be for low-power
low-speed uses like a polishing mop. It works well enough.

For a router though, such an additional speed control is typically
used with an underpowered high-speed router swinging a large
speed-limited cutter. This still needs a fair amount of torque and
thus power, and the power may already be marginal for a small router.
This is less successful.

--
Smert' spamionam