How flat should a 'cast and ground' aluminium router table be?

You did cover those points (and more) in your previous posts.

I suppose my general point would be that marketing (especially modern marketing) has always been a place where creative lying has a place. In this instance, it’s the “lying via a label” syndrome.

You ask, “…why bother to cast and grind in the first place…”. Here we must make the distinction between the manufacturer/purveyor who employs “cast & ground” as meaningful descriptions of a manufacturing process having the intended result of an accurate and serviceable router table with the description that is composed entirely of the label “cast and ground” (the unstated part being “very badly indeed”).

Compare it to the description “bicycle” as applied to a) those sold by a decent bike shop and b) those sold by a supermarket. The latter is, in fact, just “a bike-shaped object” and rarely has the necessary attributes generally understood as needful in a bicycle. For instance, the brakes don’t work and it takes 5X as much energy to pedal it - assuming the pedals don’t snap off, which they do in many cases.

One means of differentiating a proper bike from a bike-shaped object is the price. Another is the reputation of the seller. Another is the manufacturer from which it’s sourced. Same with router table, I think. The fifty quid job is just “a router table-shaped object”.

Lataxe

:joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl:…made me laugh…