Tuesday 18 February 2014

Extraction, it sucks.

The workshop where I do a good deal of the work on here has been in dire need of some better means of collecting the dust. There's a large shop-vac at one end, but the hose for it is just flex. The flex itself loses a lot of power and efficiency and generally gets in the way of every other machine down that side.

so, with the following pile of parts (and some drain pipe) a better solution is sought.


The intake to the machine is annoyingly on the furthest side from the machines, pointing to the window, not ideal so half of the parts are just to make this section to get the flow to the wall.


There's a pipe mounted in the wall which helped immensely to hold this first part in place and position the next section. The joining piece


Speaking of which, the next section is a single 3m length of drain pipe with T sections for two down pipes for the radial arm saw and the table saw. A shelf had to be cleared out to make space, but it was replaced with a wider one for all the same stuff to go back on to. no space lost fortunately.

The joining part between the two pieces will wait until the end in case things have to be shuffled around.


Similarly, the next piece goes around the garage door, working backwards towards the longest section above the shelf and work bench.


After that, the long section was extended around the corner and the ends connected with a rubber sleeve to account for the slight change in pitch.


The other end was done the same way and connected in to link all three parts.


The next parts to go in are two down pipes to lower the end to a workable height above the main bench and table saw, with a flat gate to block the holes not being used and improve suction. After that, another run down the other wall.

At one point the plan was to run two pipes in separate runes feeding into a Y shape at the vac end, instead a single loop should keep the flow of air smoother and if two tools are in use at once, the flow is unidirectional rather than being split and help keep the dust moving freely to the bag.

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