[AdamHeard]

We have a manual knee mill that's 3000 lbs w/ 30" of X travel (pretty standard), we have a CNC metal router that's much heavier duty than the one you linked, and it's 20x60". We have a metal router (in terms of construction) heavier duty that the one you linked, largely for wood (24"x24"). We also have a clone of hte above mill converted to CNC.

Having used all these, even our heavy duty router does not hit the precision of the manual or CNC mill WITH jumping in the vices. Rezeroing is easy.

A quality router has a great place in FRC for platework, but you'd want something much beefier than what you linked, and that's where a CNC knee mill can be a steal (found from $3k-10k used) if your goal is to also run tubing, etc... We have a fixture on our larger router for running tubes, but it doesn't compare in power or speed to the knee mill.

For reference, our metal router can sustain 40 ipm w/ a 3/16" cutter at .07" depth. If we're watching the machine closely and keeping the mister and airblast going, we can do 80 ipm. It can do faster for shorter times (and if you are fine with a lot of cutter deflection), but not all day.

Be weary of numbers posted for cheap routers, and youtube videos. They are often showing hte cutting speed for brief periods of time, and in a situation where they are getting a lot of deflection int eh cutter and machine (wrecking accuracy).