{"id":245,"date":"2006-04-20T05:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-20T05:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/testwp\/story\/tablesaw-dust-collection-with-shop-vac\/"},"modified":"2017-01-20T03:12:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T03:12:33","slug":"tablesaw-dust-collection-with-shop-vac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/tablesaw-dust-collection-with-shop-vac\/","title":{"rendered":"Tablesaw dust collection with shop vac"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tablesaw
Tablesaw dust collector<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many woodworkers have dust collection systems, which use suction and large pipes and hoses to collect sawdust and other particles from power tools.\u00a0 For the hobbyist, these systems can be affordable, below $1000 for a decent system.\u00a0 Naturally, I therefore wondered what I could accomplish with my old shop vacuum, some junk from the garbage can, and about 20 bucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Woodshop Dust Control
\n\"cover\"
\nAmazon\"\"<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Powells<\/a>
\nIndieBound<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The basic premise is to collect sawdust, trimmings, and other particles as close to the source of production as possible.\u00a0 Many power tools come with dust collection ports built in to them these days.\u00a0 My 1950s PowrKraft table saw did not, so I set out to create a dust collector for it.<\/p>\n

The Tablesaw<\/h3>\n
\"Common
Common plastic bucket and my assistant Stanley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My tablesaw was not designed for vacuum collection of sawdust, so it has quite a few openings which needed to be covered.\u00a0 The underside of the saw is open, with a sheet-metal rim around the inside.\u00a0 This made a good place to attach a collection hood.\u00a0 I fabricated one from a rectangular plastic bucket made from HDPE (high-density polyethylene) plastic, the most common type used in common buckets and consumer packaging.<\/p>\n

\"Door
Door open<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since the bucket had a hinged snap-on lid, I turned the bucket upside down and used the lid as the bottom of the dust hood.\u00a0 The lid then became an access door to the underside of the saw.\u00a0 I used the heat gun to bend the sides of the bucket and weld on extra corner tabs<\/a>, creating flanges to sit on the rim of the saw opening.<\/p>\n

Tubing<\/h3>\n
\"Hood
Hood and tubes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the dust-collection tubing, I took the cheap route.\u00a0 I used 3-inch water drainage tubing and 1.5-inch sump pump tubing, both from the local home improvement warehouse store.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Spreader\"
Spreader<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Neither one of the tubing sizes I used matches the hose of my shop vac at 2.5 inches, so I needed some adaptors.\u00a0 Several different plastic jars from peanut butter and applesauce turned out to be very close to the correct size.\u00a0 The opening on the applesauce jar was just a little too small, so I made a spreader jig with some wooden wedges between some nuts and washers.\u00a0 When one of the nuts is tightened, the washers squeeze the wedges, forcing them outward.\u00a0 I wrapped the wooden wedges in a piece of sheet metal from a tin vegetable can, and placed the mouth of the jar over it.\u00a0 By softening the jar mouth with the heat gun, and tightening the nut, I was able to expand the jar to fit the vacuum hose just right.\u00a0 I attached the 3-inch tubing to a hole I cut in the bottom of the jar on the other end, making a nice hose adaptor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Back,
Back, inside<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Front
\nFront view<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

What’s That Noise?!<\/h3>\n

I put two dust collection points into the tablesaw collector:\u00a0 the large main 3-inch hose in the collector hood, and a second 1.5-inch hose to pick up stray sawdust from the top of the table.\u00a0 I attached them together with a Y-connection made from a plastic peanut butter jar.\u00a0 The 1.5-inch hose came out of the side of the jar, but I heated and warped the jar to make a Y connector for better airflow through the smaller hose.<\/p>\n

The first time I turned on the shop vacuum with this setup, I got a big surprise.\u00a0 In addition to the usual loud shop vac whine, I got an additional loud piercing whistle noise from the 1.5-inch hose.\u00a0 Some Internet research told me this was a “standing wave” harmonic vibration, caused by the uniform ridges in the hose.\u00a0 The factory did an accurate job of creating all of the ridges in the hose the same.\u00a0 When air passes through the hose, the ridges cause the air to vibrate at the same frequency all along the hose, causing a single tone to come out.\u00a0 It’s one big whistle.<\/p>\n

Ironically, my web search efforts revealed much about how to produce such a noise, but not how to surpress it.\u00a0 However, some thought and experimentation led to a simple answer:\u00a0 If the uniform ridges make the whistling noise, making them non-uniform should eliminate it.\u00a0 I heated the hose with the heat gun, and stretched it by different amounts at different points along the hose.\u00a0 It didn’t take much stretching to disrupt the harmonic effect, eliminating the shriek and producing quieter air flow.<\/p>\n

Particle Separator<\/h3>\n
\"Pre-separator
Pre-separator bucket<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Underside
Underside of lid<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I use the tablesaw to cut both wood and plastic at different times.\u00a0 I want to keep the two separated so the wood sawdust can be used for composting, without being contaminated by plastic pieces.<\/p>\n

I made a pre-separator to collect the wood sawdust using a 5-gallon paint bucket.\u00a0 The separator bucket sits between the tablesaw and the shop vac.\u00a0 Scraps and larger sawdust particles settle to the bottom of the bucket, while the air and fine dust pass through to the vacuum.\u00a0 It is patterened after professional cyclone separators, where the incoming airflow is directed towards the side of the cylinder and the air exit is in the center.\u00a0 As the particles are blown towards the sides, they lose velocity and swirl down to the bottom.<\/p>\n

There are just a few parts to the separator.\u00a0 The vacuum port (air exit) has a tube going down the center of the cylinder, which I made from a clear plastic applesauce jar with a mouth sized to the 2.5-inch vacuum hose, screwed into the bucket lid .\u00a0 The intake port goes to a deflector which sends the air towards the inside wall of the bucket.\u00a0 The intake port is a snap-on connector for the drain tubing, and the deflector is a scrap of plastic.\u00a0 Since the tube connector, deflector, and bucket lid are all HDPE plastic, I welded them together with the heat gun.\u00a0\u00a0 I also cut a window into the side of the bucket, to indicate how full it is.<\/p>\n

Now when I cut wood, I plug the vacuum in to the separator, and my wood cuttings are collected in the bucket.\u00a0 If I want to cut plastic, I bypass the separator and suck the plastic scraps right into the shop vac.<\/p>\n

Airborne dust filter<\/h3>\n
\"Airborne
Airborne dust filter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To reduce airborne free-floating dust, I employed a trick which I saw recently in a home improvement magazine.\u00a0 I took a normal household box fan, and attached a furnace filter onto the intake side of the fan.\u00a0\u00a0 I took the plastic grill off the intake side of the fan and reattached it with spacers and longer screws, allowing me to simply slide the furnace filter into the slot.\u00a0 It works quite effectively, producing a nice brown circle on the filter in no time at all.\u00a0 This is good, showing dust that is not getting inhaled or settling on everything else.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many woodworkers have dust collection systems, which use suction and large pipes and hoses to collect sawdust and other particles from power tools.\u00a0 For the hobbyist, these systems can be affordable, below $1000 for a decent system.\u00a0 Naturally, I therefore wondered what I could accomplish with my old shop vacuum, some junk from the garbage … Continue reading “Tablesaw dust collection with shop vac”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23,27,3,4],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project","tag-plastic","tag-tablesaw","tag-tools","tag-workshop"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bolis.com\/amillar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}