Chop Saw Dust Reduction or Elimnaton help

[srakoczy]

Hello,

I have the Harbor Freight Dust Collector and I was wondering if anyone has found a great solution to eliminating sawdust shooting out the front of a chop saw?

I have modified my dust collector slightly. I have a 4” single pipe coming out from the impeller instead of the stock “Y” thinking it would help with flow. I also turned the motor so the pipe has a straight shot. I made sure to leave some room between the motor and the bag to give it room to breath. I have the Wynn Filter on it and built a neutral vane for it. My chop saw is a 10” Porter Cable.

The chop saw is the first tool in the system. The 4” pipe is “Yed” and then reduce down to 2.5” and connected to the rear port of the chop saw with and adaptor which I think drops down to 1.5”. I get a lot of dust shooting out the front of the chop saw with this setup. It also visibly slows the air flow, I have tried opening one of the 4” ports to get more suction and it does not help with the saw dust shooting out the front but it does get the dust in the bag moving around better. I have tried with and without the neutral vane.

I also tried cutting a hole under the chop saw and putting a 4” pipe under it both alone and with the 2.5” connected to the back and that did not help. One thing I tried that appeared to give decent result was holding a 4” open line on the left rear side of the blade in combination with the 2.5” connected to the rear of the chop saw. This is bad because during my testing of this it sucked up fairly large scrap that I cut off, luckily my impeller didn’t break! I may go with trying to find a way to attach it there but thought I would check to see if anyone had a better idea first.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Steve

[compgodjds]

I don't own one but this link has a bunch of stuff on the HF dust collector:

http://www.cianperez.com/Wood/WoodDocs/WoodNet%20HFDC%20Thread.htm

[thrytis]

I had thought about running a DC port up from beneath the saw, but i have never seen anyone do it before. Did that collect any dust from below? I had been planning on running a 4" from below and a 4" to a box behind the saw and skip the saw's dust port. Unfortunately I don't think the your DC could handle two 4" ports though.

Thanks.

[srakoczy]

It didn't really do much, I think the problem is that once you leave the end of the hose, the suction power drops off quickly and underneath the saw was not a sealed system to maintain the suction power.

[srakoczy]

Thanks, I looked there and to the woodworking forum it points to, but either this has not been discussed in detail, or I am not constructing the search query correctly.

[LCHIEN]

the big problem is you neck down from a 6" port (prior to the Twin 4" Wye") to 4 then to 2.5 then to 1.5 which totally throttles any air flow you may have with that DC.
While some suction on the 1.5" DC port of a miter saw dust shroud will help the main idea is t get as much air flow as possible from the sawing area into the DC. A miter saw is difficult; Some people use a hood at the rear to suck everything into the hood with as open a shot as possible.

[bthere]

I have thought about this a little since a visit to Sarge's shop. He has built a shroud around the back of his blade to gather a bit more dust into the exhaust, and has a collection port also down near the table much as you describe. I'm sure if he sees this he'll be able to provide a photo of what he has done.

I've been wondering about doing something similar. What I have been thinking about is building a shroud around the rear of the blade and incorporating the dust collection prot in the rear of this. If the shroud had enough intake area, it should work ok. I think that the main problems would be with handling some of the bevels and such where things would start getting in the way of the DC piping.

I hadn't really thought about the issue of a large cutoff being sucked in. I do use a separator that catches the big stuff.

[Tom Slick]

take a look at this page.

http://www.airhand.com/diy.asp

and this works well if you have the room, it's designed for carpenters

http://www.amazon.com/FastCap-Chopshop-Saw-Hood/dp/B000VS4K7K/ref=sr_1_10/103-2050068-4809405?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1189789380&sr=1-10

[srakoczy]

I actually went back to the underneath suction approach as this recommends. I took a dust collection floor sweep and cut it up to fit underneath the chop saw. With the scraps and a little duct tape, it makes a pretty good closed system under the say. I would say it gets rid of 90% of the dust, it still spits out a little, but it is an order of magnitude better that just using the rear dust port.

[hermit]

I tried an adjustable shroud I saw in a wood mag a few years ago, but gave up on the idea. I found that the miter saw is one of those tools that a DC is a PIA to use. You have to keep turning it off and on, unless you keep it on the whole time in the shop, which I don't do. I use a dedicated shop vac connected to one of those Sears tool activated switches to turn it on when I use the saw. It gets about 80 percent, but other than that, I let the dust fly, and clean up afterward. Its actually a lot less bother. I saw an interesting article in Popular Woodworking this month, where they built a simple miter saw stand, sans bells and whistles, and the DC is just a trash bin underneath. I kind of like this approach. Lesson for the day ...... don't kill yourself trying to catch dust from the MS. Concentrate on other tools, and use the table saw for more crosscuts.

Todd

[cgallery]

Collection from below seems to be problematic as the wood being cut would cover the dust collection port. Kinda like drilling holes in a zero-clearance insert on a table saw (after the cutting commences, the holes are covered).

My solution would be to use some sort of floor sweep connected to the DC. I would align the long edge parallel with the path of the blade, and use some sort of arm to hold it there.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I had thought about running a DC port up from beneath the saw, but i have never seen anyone do it before. Did that collect any dust from below? I had been planning on running a 4" from below and a 4" to a box behind the saw and skip the saw's dust port. Unfortunately I don't think the your DC could handle two 4" ports though.

Thanks.

That's what I did with my PC 10" SCMS. I will try to get photos. The set up is ugly but it works. It is real close to a 3hp cyclone though so my air movement is substantial.

[tedkitch]

Here is the best thing that we have come up with here at work.


We created a custom shroud for our chop saws out of acrylic and each one has two dust ports in the back. Although it doesn't get rid of all of the dust it does a very good job of containing it.

Hope this helps,