Like many others, I have a Bosch POF 1400 ACE router. It’s a popular hand-held router because it is quite cheap and decent quality for DIY use. Being Bosch green (“DIY home user”) rather than blue (“professional”), it does not come in an L-Boxx but its own plastic case instead. L-Boxxes are popular container system by Bosch based on the Sortimo containers. Many of my other mobile tools are already in L-Boxxes, so it would be handy to have the router in one too and fit all of my most-used accessories.
For the POF 1400, the largest L-Boxx size 4 (also known as L-Boxx 374) has a good height to fit a router and accessories. The router itself needs a fixture to rest in or on, the odd-shaped accessory parts need custom holders and router bits should be stored in a hole array. There seem to be no commercial inserts available and DIY is more fun anyway. So, let’s get to work.
The base layer deep in the box stores a wrench, the accessories the router came with and leaves room for some more. Shadow foam seems to be the best option for this task. For this project, I got shadow foam pre-cut for L-Boxxes to save myself fiddling to get the outline right. The contours of the oddly shaped accessories can be cut out with a sharp knife or routed with a sharp, fast-spinning bit in multiple passes to the required depth.
The top layer stores the router itself and has plenty of room for bits. It is made of 12mm Siebdruckplatte (resin-coated plywood) for stability because the router is quite heavy at 3.5kg. Conveniently, it can sit on top of the notches in the box that holds the red locking clips. Unfortunately, the height of the box was not quite enough, so I cut out three small sections of the honeycomb structure in the lid. It is still plenty strong without them (the L-Boxxes of some tools already come with missing honey combs). The router sits centered in some cutouts that I found by tracing the router and refining the fit. The central hole is bit larger than it needs to be to fit the router which allows to grab the wrench below.
For the bit storage, I laid out some bits and found a hole pattern of 40mm distance working well when every other row is shifted by 20mm against the previous one. I opted for 8mm holes on one side of the router and 6mm on the other side. The smaller 6mm holes can always the reamed out to 8mm if I need more. All exposed edges are stained black for a sleek look, although I didn’t bother to go into each and every hole.
And this is the final configuration (for now) with some accessories and bits:
Overall, a very useful project for an afternoon. The bits will thank me by staying sharp for longer now that they are no longer rattling around loosely in the plastic case. Made from some cheap foam and a cut-off, it was also quite cheap.