Quote Originally Posted by Mjolinor View Post
Why don't you dismantle the motor and put the chuck shaft into the motor directly so that the bearings on the chuck shaft have the motor between them. That will allow you to make it much shorter. The motor would be in the middle of your black bit and the red bit would be another machined bearing mount.

I have bought an 8 mm chuck and will get an 8 mm shafted motor so that I can do this when I get round to it.
The motor has a 6mm shaft and the chuck shaft is 8mm, so that won't fit, that's why I'm using a flexible coupler in between them. One advantage of that is that I could easily replace the motor for another one, for example I want to use the router to cut foam cores for wings, cutting the foam doesn't require a lot of power so I can use a smaller and quieter motor instead.
The other issue is that the motor is 52mm in diameter, so it has to be placed above the spindle holder anyway.