Home made router tables work fine, I have made quite a few over the years of custom woodworking. Your design criteria start with a large flat table, melamine works great, and the store bought ones are frequently 1" mdf melamine. Other considerations are ease of bit change, bit height adjustment, and fence. Bit changes are helped by the removable insert the router attaches to, you can lift the whole thing from the table. I had an extension welded onto one of the collet wrenches for extra length which helps a bit. These inserts are available through rockler and similar outfits. They can be nice since many have inserts for different size bits and pattern collars. Height can be done with an after market lift, or just reach under and turn the knob on your plunge router, if you are not doing too many changes, reaching under is not too bad. It helps to remove the springs from the router posts, they just add friction in the wrong direction if the router is upside down all the time. Keep track of the brass pin that falls out when you take the router off the posts. For a fence, it really is as simple as a board clamped to the table, one easy way is to bolt one side down as a pivot, and then the other gets a slot routed to move side to side, makes for very quick adjustment, but if you want to remove the router for bit changes the fence needs to come off. Router tables are often used with larger bits, so variable speed is useful here, and dust collection can be helpful as the chips can mess you up if they get in the way.
Rob
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