Milescraft 1298 3D-Pantograph Router Stencil Tracing Jig

I purchased this last week and began setting up today. First, the printed instructions are HORRIBLE, both for set up and operation. One booklet is nothing but a series of pictures with no written explanations at all.The "Owners Manual" consists of 4 pages of brief, poorly written instructions. Attempting to use these instructions to setup and operate the product is problematic. Fortunately there is a DVD video enclosed which helps but is not what is really needed if you are going to need help at the bench.The router adapter plate is connected to the arms at the "adapter pivots" on the plate. This connection is designed to be adjusted each time you want to change the reduction percentage of the template using the 3 holes in each the arm. i.e. 40%, 60%, 80%. . The screws connecting the upper and lower portions of the adapter pivot screw into two #10 nuts that just slip into slots on the pivot. These nuts easily fall out when attempting to secure the screws and repeatedly fell on the floor. I wound up using a small piece of tape to keep them in place. The screws are JUST long enough reach the nuts making the task even harder each time you wish to change the reduction. The pivot really needs some type of threaded insert and not loose nuts. It may seem picky but this connection is supposed to be used to make routine recurring adjustments.I would strongly suggest spending some time on scrap wood learning how to adjust it. I found that each time you change to a new reduction hole on the guide arms, you will need to move the hold down socket to a new location in order to keep it centered on the work piece. I made several of the Old English letters and was pleased with the results. I would have rated 5 stars if not for the poor documentation.While not a big deal it would also be nice if mounting screws for hold down socket were included.I also did not find a "stencil cover" in the package. I used a heavy duty document cover which worked for now.I would recommend as a nice addition to a shop.

As the master mold maker for Mold Store USA I found this Milescraft 1298 3D Pantograph one of the best investments we have ever made. It reduced the time it takes to hand carve a mold face for a concrete mold from an all day job down to half an hour with far less finish time to deal with.We were able to easily jig up and route 9.5 inch square and round areas for our mold faces. The limitations we read about in other reviews are due to the limited mechanical experiences of the users. For us, the assembly directions were dismal at best and the DVD did not work at all in our computer but we have enough experience that putting it together was extremely simple and easy to do. We had also watched a couple of videos online before making the purchase so knew what to expect. The packet of letters that came with it are pretty much useless to us, but sign making was not our end goal anyway.We have intensive experience in graphic arts so making patterns to follow is very simple. We simply chopped up the images on the computer and printed 4 pages and trimmed and taped them together to create the large poster sized art needed to do the routing jobs. It was also very easy to set the art to be exactly where we want it on the work surface. We simply found the exact center of the work piece, set the router bit on that and then positioned the artwork under the stylus directly over the center mark on the artwork that we had put in when printing the artwork out. Using the 50% setting on the pantograph made it extremely easy to set up this way as the artwork is exactly twice as big and we made the lines in the artwork about the size of line a Sharpie makes so it very easy to follow. We did not use any kind of plastic sleeve for the artwork. We simply taped the artwork directly down to our working surface. We only made two practice pieces before starting actual production mold faces. That was mostly to proof the working area and set the router depth and bit size to do the best job. The assembly pops apart from the base board and stores away easily enough in the shop as well. We actually dedicated the small router we have to this pantograph, as it has already become one of our top used tools in the shop.

For the money, this device is a good introduction to the world of cut-rate CNC! :) Well, not really CNC, but if affords the opportunity to do a lot of neat things for a fraction of the cost. I would have given it 5 stars, but there seems to be a slight imperfection in the design, such that when I tried to cut a perfect rectangle, not all corners were at 90 degrees. The error may derive from the slight looseness at the joints, or a slight imperfection in the parallelogram frame.The printed diagrams are barely comprehensible, but the video helps a lot. I would offer the hint that after you assemble the thing, measure the length of all the sides from end to joint - they MUST be equal. I managed to assemble it otherwise the first time. Took a while to figure out what was wrong. Once you understand assembly, it is dead simple.I chose to do a fairly challenging project - cutting letters into Hard Maple blocks, but the results were passable (see photo). I would advise using a 1/8" round-nosed bit, rather than the straight bit I used; I think the round-nosed bit would produce letters that were more visibly part of the wood (i.e. not glued on).If you choose to start with a challenging project like my letters, be advised to closely check the tip/base of what some call the "follower" arm. I refer to the vertical bolt with a plastic tip that you use to follow the outline you are replicating. My plastic tip was crooked, which caused an asymmetric cutting effect when I followed the shape of my letters (so I fabricated a properly-centered wooden tip). The kit includes a whole pile of large-scale printed letters you can trace around, but I was not satisfied with the results, so I made large 1/2" thick plywood letters that I traced for better precision.If you are a creative type of person, this tool lends itself to novel ideas I think. I commend to your reading the articles posted by this fellow Matthias Wendel on YouTube, related to Pantographs. I stole his idea of cutting large template letters.

Came with paper manual which was absolutely useless and incorrect. Also with DVD which should assembly but: watching the DVD you ll see a warning that due to product improvement the holes are not on both but only on one side of the metal bars. The black plactic clips however are from the production before, for the bars with 2 holes. I had to cut something off the clips ans drill a hole on the bottom of the bar to make things work. What a rubbish. If it hadn t been sent from USA I had sent it straight back. Not recommended

Great tool for the creative. First job I gave it turned out professional quality using CNC bits not router bits as standard router bits bend and break CNC bits are so cheep it's a no brained.

Does what it says on the tin. Just needs a plywood base, router (various sizes will work fine). Templates are OK, but I plan to use my own. Good value and prompt delivery. Smooth mechanism irons out my natural hand tremor.

Absolutely love this piece of kit. Once you have practiced using it, you can produce some brilliant work.

Good fun to use : can feel a bit unstable and disconnected, but good value