Dust Collection for miter saw station - shop vac or 1.5HP DC?

[Matt Putnam]

I'm upfitting my shop (30'x20' garage of my 4 car garage) and plan to build a miter saw station. I'm designing the cabinets for that now and need to determine the dust collection approach and looking for guidance here.

I thought I'd take my old shop vac and install it in a cabinet under the miter saw. However I did a quick test recently using it for dust collection on the miter saw and was under impressed. But I wonder how much of the poor performance was due to current equipment. The shop vac (2" hose) is probably 10 yrs. old. I don't know how powerful it is but I do know it's loud as heck. My miter saw is a 10" Makita sliding compound that's ~20 yrs. old. My test was simply using a 2" reducer and connecting that directly to the port on the saw. I'm sure some dust was picked up by the vac but there was a lot blown onto the saw/floor/wall.

Alternatively, I have a Delta 1.5HP dust collector that I'm about to upgrade to a centralized DC for my shop. So I have the Delta 1.5HP on hand. I have no doubt the Delta would do a better job but I'd hoped to get it off the shop floor (space). So my ultimate question is can the shop vac effectively serve as a dust collector for a miter saw?

I planned to build a hood around the miter saw. I also suspect newer miter saws may be better for dust control. I saw a review not too long ago touting the DeWalt for this. Would a good/decent shop vac connected to a hood do OK? Or is this a no brainer - that I should use my Delta (also with a hood) and be done with it?

Lastly, I don't currently plan to connect the miter saw to my central DC as I think I'd often not power the large DC up for a single miter saw cut (which I do quite often).

[Randall J Cox]

I used to have my Fein shop vac connected to my hooded 12" miter saw, didn't work very well. Changed from 2.5" to 5" bottom funneled intake and hooked up to my central 1.75 cyclone system (small shop). This works very well for me now. Think you will need to a lot of air to capture all the dust. I realize I shouldn't turn on my main cyclone more than about 2-3 times per hour so I try and plan ahead in my miter saw use. Or sometimes just use it now and then without dust collection (the side of my shop is open with two barn doors). Randy

[Martin Wasner]

The more airflow the better.

The biggest trick I think it's to try and divert the chips as much as possible towards in intake for the dust collection. I make a well behind the saw for chips to drop down into, I currently have pieces on the sides cut at an angle to divert chips to the hole. Hindsight, the hole should be as wide as the hood so there's no horizontal or angled surfaces to hold anything at all.
Make your hood as tight to the saw as reasonably possible.
I mounted strips vertically on the back wall of the hood to contain the spray of chips as well. It only works on a 90º cut, but the majority of cuts are that anyways.

Dust collection on a chop box or miter saw is never incredible. You're just trying to keep negative pressure right around it to keep the fine stuff at bay, but you're still going to have chips in the floor. It's just a difficult tool to collect from without going absolutely haywire on dust collection.

[Wade Lippman]

My kapex is well designed and a vacuum catches almost everything because the suction is directed to just the right spot. On most saws, a hood and DC would be the way to go.

[Andy Giddings]

+1 on Martin's comments. One example is in this video at 5:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6z_Yf4BMoY

[Josh Kocher]

I think a lot has to do with the design of the collection on the saw.

I used to have a 12" ridgid SCMS and no matter how I tried it - with a plain shop vac, a Festool vac or a 1.5hp DC - it was always poor dust collection.

DC is important to me and I recently got a 10" Bosch glide on a clearance sale. I use it primarily with the Festool vac, it is very good collection. I used some blue tape and extended the back flap lower and further on the sides and it got even better... I'd guess collection is average somewhere in the 90's percentage wise.

I have my saw on a mobile stand now, not a permanent station, but if I'm doing more than a few cuts I'll also clamp a 5" flex hose from a drop off my 2hp DC near the back of the saw. So vac close to the blade, collection behind and that seems to clean up a lot of the stragglers... Eventually when I build mitre saw station I'll add some kind of hood and continue to use both vac and DC.

I find cutting slowly improves DC also...

[Len Rosenberg]

Matt, I have a Kapex and tried using a WAP shop vac for the dust collection. Was ineffective, at best. After some research, I bought a Fein Turbo I, and the DC is great, due to a significant increase in CFM compared to the WAP. Four keys to DC with a miter saw are 1)CFM of the vac, 2) length of the hose (shorter is better, I cut mine down to about 5 feet from 12 and it made a huge difference), 3)Cut slowly, which gives the vac a better chance to suck up the dust, and 4) the dust collection design of the saw.

[Jim Becker]

The miter saw is one of the very hardest tools to collect dust from in any shop. You have to collect from both the port on the blade guard as well as from either a surrounding hood or with some saws, from downdraft. A shop vac cannot handle this. A small dust collector will also be marginal because a large amount of air must be moved to do the work. Bigger is better, in other words, and the hood with or without downdraft is essential to do it "right".

[Bruce Wrenn]

Photog posted MANY years ago on another forum, using a "Big Gulp" mounted to frame of MS. I did this on my DeWalt 705, and connected it to my DC Works pretty good. Do some searching for his posts as it may still be out there.

[Jim Dwight]

To make the shop vac effective, you must have a good setup to let the limited airflow of the vac be directed to the sawdust and chips from the saw. The Kapek has a flexible piece that I bought and adapted to my Hitachi CMS. It helped but it is still no Kapek. I've seen youtubes where people modified miter saws to the point where they were happy with it. I use my Hitachi in the shop with a shop vac but still have to clean up what doesn't go into the shop vac the first time. Works OK but not great. I've used a small 1hp Delta DC with the same saw and it wasn't any better. If you spew the dust all over, it is hard to get regardless. A big 3-5hp DC could probably get the vast majority of the debris but that is a big cost.

So you if you want to use the shop vac you probably need a new CMS. Or put up with the need for cleanup once in awhile - like I do.

[Carl Kona]

The best Miter saw dust setup I have seen (for a permanent mounted saw) is shown in this video ~3:40 mark. The clear plastic makes it more open and light but restricts airflow to just around the cut area. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKSqjPuR1k4

Jay bates shows a similar setup in his new shop but uses a CV with 6" duct to move the air. About 5:50 into the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6z_Yf4BMoY

Definitely a DC will work better at this than any Vac. As previously mentioned you need air movement, a high end vac will get about 150 cfm your shop vac will probably do less than half that. Your Delta DC setup should have 2-3 times the airflow. You just need to focus the air movement.

Hope that helps.

Let us know what you end up doing.

Carl

[George Bokros]

What about the Rousseau Dust Hood?

[Steve Cowart]

I just posted some pics on this thread,

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...ust-collection

DEFINITELY you would be better off with at least a 4 in duct and more cfm than you could get with a shop-vac. I had to build the drawers under my saw shallow to allow for the ducting, but it works GREAT! It doesn't really take up that much space, you just need to make sure you can still use the angle capabilities easily. More pics on the other thread.

20170425_082834.jpg

[Carl Kona]

Steve - very nice chop station. Great idea to have the sides open!

Carl

[Steve Cowart]

Steve - very nice chop station. Great idea to have the sides open!

Carl

Thanks Carl!