Dust collector on compound slider

[Rick Lucrezi]

Any one have a good system for dust collection on a Bosch 12 inchompound slider? I have tried a few things, short of building a box with a suction port in the bottom, which I dont have room for, I have not been able to make anything work as well as I would like. I am currently running a hose to the exaust port from my main DC unit. Alot of dust goes out the sides. Really bad when I am cutting MDF

[Jason Yeager]

You asked a question I have been wondering about for awhile, I will be looking forward to see if any great ideas come up. My miter saw dust collection is MISERABLE.

[Gerry Werth]

Rick,
There are many options for purchased and home built collection systems for SCMSs. I use the Rosseau Downdrafter. It is not cheap, and I bought the one with sliding rails attached to the back of my cabinets. You can see it in Workshops (My Shop) about page 7, posted in late Nov. My Ridgid has a 90* exhaust port ( 2") that I did not hook up to a hose because when the saw is down, it blows nicely into the big yellow hood. I have it connected with 5" hose instead of 4", and I have very little dust blow by when all other ports are closed and only this port open. I'm not sure what your "don't have much room" means, but this takes 18" of space behind the bench mount, so this may be a none starter for you. I use the space behind cabinets to store wood, and things I don't use often, like sawhorses, and scaffolding. The best solution to collecting most of the dust is to use as large a hose and your dust collection system will allow for maximum airflow.

[Mike Zilis]

Gerry,

Where did you get that hood and rails? I did some searching on the Interwebitubes but it doesn't appear to be available anymore. Can you suggest a retailer that might carry it?

For my own SCMS (Bosch 10") I took a multi-tier approach that does much better than the dust bag that came with the saw, but still isn't as good as I'd like it to be.

First off, I added a scoop to the bottom of the dust chute made of stiff aluminum duct tape. This helps the built in dust chute catch more dust as it flies off the saw blade. I believe I got this idea from this very forum.

Second, I purchased the small wall-mounted (normally) dust collector from Rockler. This is dedicated to just the SCMS. I have it laid horizontally on the shelf below the saw and it's plugged into i-socket switch along with the saw so it turns on automatically when I start the saw.

From the dust collector I run a short piece of 4" hose to a "Y" with one branch going to a "big gulp" dust hood mounted just behind the saw and the second branch going up top to replace the dust bag that came with the saw.

It might be easier to add some photos...

[james bell]

i have tried numerous options but none seem to work well. my solution is to roll it to my garage door (12' x 12'), open the door and cut. my shop isn't heated or cooled so no problem with that. only problem is if the wind is blowing from the north, then this option doesn't work. i just find another project to work on.

BTW - I also roll my drill press and old makita planer/jointer to the door. had a jerryrig solution for the makita, but a sheet on the floor and open door (with my craftsman shop vac used as a blower) cleans up the mess well.

any good solutions would also be appreciated.

merry christmas

[Jamie Buxton]

Put a shop vac on the sawdust port of the saw. Then put a hood behind it like the Fast-Cap one: http://www.fastcap.com/estore/pc/Cho...Hood-3p113.htm

[Rick Lucrezi]

I have the DC connected to the exhaust port and I made a shroud that helps funnel the dust up the exhaust port. I spent a couple hours today looking at the home built units and kept seeing the Kapex referrals so I went and looked at the website, watched a bunch of videos and that's that. Put my Bosch on Craigslist and will order the Kapex as soon as I have a buyer. Wish they were not so spendy but you do get what you pay for.

[jim gossage]

I took the cheapo approach for my radial arm saw. The dust port at the top back of the guard was completely useless as most of the dust came off the bottom of the blade and was ejected toward the back wall. I observed where the stream of dust went, and then took a mini cream puff container (7.5 x 7.5 x 6" deep) and cut an appropriate hole in the top (pic 1). I then cut a hole in the side (which is now the bottom, pic 1) and glued the box onto a 4" dust collector blast gate (pic 3) and fashioned a wooded bracket for the whole thing. Cost $0 (I save every container that I empty, much to my wife's chagrin). I plugged up the original dust port on the blade guard, hooked it up to my Griz 2 hp collector, and this box collects 95% of the dust.

[Erik Christensen]

First off Rick – you will love your Kapex. Besides best in class dust collection the accuracy of the saw with the dual built-in lasers is remarkable. I was taught when doing trim work cut an eighth long then sneak up on the final fit – works like a charm but wastes a lot of time. With the Kapex I focus on getting a precise measurement and cut to fit 1st shot and have not seen any increase in wasted molding – enjoy.

I built this for my RAS (Kapex stock dust collection works good enough – but not as good as the RAS!). IMHO the % of dust collected depends equally on the design of the dust shroud and the CFM of your collector. I have a 5HP clearvue with 100% 6” piping so I probably could have just had an open pipe behind the saw and it would have worked but I hate dust so I was willing to build a shroud. The dust in picture is all that is left from normal use – I did not clean the top for the picture. When using the saw there is no visible dust in the air and it even picks up thin cut-offs right off the table. Only time it is less than desired is when cutting wide stock where the blade is over 2 feet away from the dust intake – not sure anything would help in that case.

[Randy Walker]

I have solved part of the dc problem on my Dewalt compound miter saw. A lot of dust used to go out below the table when I cut through the stock. I cut and carved a piece of 2x stock to fit into the slot below the table then replaced the throat plate. Now the dust that used to go out the bottom gets trapped in the kerf and ejected up into the dust port. I am catching 60 to 70 percent of the dust but a lot still spray's out the sides of the ramp up to the dc port.

Hope this helps someone

Randy Walker

[Rick Lucrezi]

First off Rick – you will love your Kapex. Besides best in class dust collection the accuracy of the saw with the dual built-in lasers is remarkable. I was taught when doing trim work cut an eighth long then sneak up on the final fit – works like a charm but wastes a lot of time. With the Kapex I focus on getting a precise measurement and cut to fit 1st shot and have not seen any increase in wasted molding – enjoy.

I built this for my RAS (Kapex stock dust collection works good enough – but not as good as the RAS!). IMHO the % of dust collected depends equally on the design of the dust shroud and the CFM of your collector. I have a 5HP clearvue with 100% 6” piping so I probably could have just had an open pipe behind the saw and it would have worked but I hate dust so I was willing to build a shroud. The dust in picture is all that is left from normal use – I did not clean the top for the picture. When using the saw there is no visible dust in the air and it even picks up thin cut-offs right off the table. Only time it is less than desired is when cutting wide stock where the blade is over 2 feet away from the dust intake – not sure anything would help in that case.

Which laser are you using on the RAS and are you happy with it?

[Ray Newman]

Rousseau "DownDrafter" -- Google is your friend:
http://www.rousseauco.com/downdrafter/index.htm

In 2001, after I moved to WA, I bought a bench style DownDrafter from the inventor and the then company owner. He told me that the bigger dust collection hose, the better it will work and with some SCMS, it captures more dust due to the saw design.

I temporarily hooked it up to a Hitachi 10” SCMS. It worked well as a chop saw, but when used as a slider, the dust collection was so-so allowed dust to escape.

When I finally hooked it up in its permanent location and to a 4” hose, it still worked well as a chop saw, but as a slider pulled out 3-4 plus inches, it was lacking more than before.

My SWAG (Scientific Wild Arsed Guess) on its performance with my saw and set up:

--Needed at least a 5” dia. hose;
--Should have been very close to the to the main 6” DC duct run to pull as much air as possible. I had about a 6‘ length of hose between the saw and the main DC duct. However, this same hose works very well with my 15" planer and drill press DC hook ups.
--And as said before, with some saws, it will work better than with others.

When I looked at the videos more carefully, the saw pictured has a wide fence opening and I think that this helps.

And as another poster mentioned, the unit takes up a great deal of space behind the saw. It is also very heavy if mounted placed on a mobile or portable stand or cart. I have my Hitachi mounted on a shop cart. In the past, I placed a rather large cardboard box at the rear, which does capture as much dust as it can. I keep the shop vacuum handy.

One poster mentioned the “Fastcap ChopSaw Hood.” Within the last year or so, I examined one at a local Woodcraft wood “show”. Interesting design, but it does take up room and seems to be rather flimsy, esp. if you need to take it down when not using it.

In my experience and from others say, DC with a SCMS is problematic....

[Erik Christensen]

Rick

I really like it -

The laser beams width matches the kerf of the blade. The Laserkerf comes in the two most popular blade widths of 3/32"(Model 100) and 1/8"(Model 125).

So the width of the laser = width of the blade so it is equally accurate on either side of the blade.

I had a Model 100 on my old crapsman RAS that could only power a thin kerf blade so when I got my 12" delta RAS I bought the Model 125.

[Mike Zilis]

Hi Ray,

Thanks for the link. I had already found that web page though. I'm looking for a link to purchase one of these Downdrafters. Amazon shows two models but both are listed as unavailable. I can't seem to find another retailer that offers them for sale which led me to speculate that perhaps they weren't being sold anymore. I hope I'm wrong...

Mike

[Peter Aeschliman]

Have you tried looking at all of the sites rousseau lists as retailers? See the left side of the following page:

http://www.rousseauco.com/downdrafter/index.htm

In my opinion, I don't see how the downdrafter will capture anything other than big chips. In my experience, the fine dust flies all over the place and floats in the air. The heavy chips have the inertia to fly through the air to the area behind the saw.

If you're after fine dust collection, it needs to be collected much closer to the actual cut.

Sliders are much harder for dust collection than their non-sliding counterparts. I have a non-sliding saw. My solution has been major overkill, but it works really well. I did the following:

1) hooked up a 2 1/2" hose to the factory DC fitting. This does collect some dust, but only maybe a third of it.

2) Added some thin guage steel to the opening of the factory DC fitting to get it closer to the blade (like you did in the last pic you posted above). This helped only a little bit... probably wasn't worth the effort.

3) I installed one of these flexible ducts that hangs down from above: (http://www.woodcraft.com/Family/2021187/2021187.aspx). It's aimed right at the back of the blade where it exits the back of the workpiece, perpendicular to the blade. This was by far the biggest improvement I noticed. It does a decent job of collecting the fine dust right at the cut. Some inevitably will escape since I only have this duct on one side of the blade, but it's a big help.

4) Items 1 and 2 are hooked up to my 1hp dust collector. I recently added a 3hp Grizzly unit. Everything I did above collects about 75% of the dust. The last step I took was plumbing in the 3hp DC to collect the dust that flies back to the area behind the saw (much like the downdrafter). I didn't attempt to build a "backstop" of any kind since there's a wall right behind the saw. I simply cut a hole in the underside of the table.

Ultimately, my setup, with 2 DC's connected, captures maybe 90% of the dust. It gets worse when I have to make a cut at a compound angle and/or at cross cuts other than 90 degrees. So for finer work, I use my TS for cross cuts whenever possible.