Dusty sander questions

[Jeff Monson]

I use a 5 1/2" dewalt sander and it makes clouds of dust, it has the dust collector on the back but it doesnt do a whole lot in my opinion, so are there ro sanders out there that have great dust collection systems or is there some type of adaptors I can put on my dewalt to hook up to my dust collector? I've tried a couple of home made adaptors and the hose is always falling off. So I'd like some recemmondations on sanders or dc adaptors or what you guys use to control dusty ro sanders.

[tod evans]

jeff, i`m pretty sure the general consenus for dust collection on an electric r/o sander is festool.....02 tod

[Gary McKown]

Shop vac works better than a DC with a RO sander, IMO. For the two I have (PC and B&D), I threw away the bags and used the attachment collars to fashion adapters to a standard vac flex hose. Oh, and the lighter the hose the better.

For a lot of sanding I also use a perforated table/box made from reinforced pegboard. The dust is pretty much under control with both fixes in operation.

[Lee DeRaud]

On a related subject, how about disc/belt combo sanders? Mine has a (more-or-less useless) DC port, but it looks like the general configuration of the tool itself puts it in the same class as a lathe with respect to dust collection difficulty. Any pointers?

[Lee Schierer]

I have a Porter Cable ROS and it's dust collector was less than totally effective. I found that I could take the dust collector off , wrap 3 turns of black electrical tape around the metal outlet where the dust collector was and slip it inside my small diameter shop vac hose. It almost never comes off and does a pretty good job of removing all the dust from what ever I am sanding. I put a screw type hose clamp around the outside of the vacuum hose end piece to keep it from cracking.

[J.R. Rutter]

I can vouch for the festool dc. I run some makita 5" + the festool 150ets. The filters on the shop vac have to be clean for the makitas, but you hardly notice if the festool is disconnected from the vac - except for the dust blowing out the end of the hose I keep attached to it . . .

I also put a JDS air filter under the table where I sand. In the new shop I'm setting up, I might even have the outlet of the air filter come up and blow back across the table to help with the 1/8 roundover routing that I do on doors freehand . . .