I bought a Jet 3hp cabinet saw back in September. The saw is connected to a Jet 1100 CK DC. The DC does a fine job of collecting the dust from the other machines in the shop, but the dust in the cabinet of the table saw just settles there and requires me to turn on the DC and get on my hands and knees to move the dust in the cabinet to the 4" opening by hand pretty often. It's made no difference as to the legnth of the run to the DC either, I've had it down to 6' and the dust still settles. Anyway, it's my mission this week to figure something out that will prevent this from happening. Questions for the group: Anyone else have poor dust collection on their cabinet saw? What kind/brand TS and what cfm DC are you using? Any other details how you fixed the problem would also be helpful. I have a few ideas to fix the problem, and will be "field testing" them this week to see if any really work. Thanks, --dave.
What happens if you just leave it alone? My contractor's saw has some sawdust that has accumulated around the sides, but it acts as a dam to funnel the new stuff to the dc inlet. It does not get any bigger that what is already there. I suspect you have the same situation.
Given the aerodynamics of a saw cabinet, it is not possible to grab every little bit of dust that gets under the top. Once you get to the level of equilibrium, it will get it as it flows. Try just leaving it alone for a while.
There are usually lots of holes/spaces inside a cabinet saw that decreases the DC effectiveness. You can try sealing up some of the spaces. I made two plugs, made from pieces of foam glued to fiberboard. These plugs fit into the tilt and blade riser slots and helped a lot. Of course, these plugs fall out if you move the blade too much, but the tilt remains in place most of the time. You might also consider putting a slant board inside the cabinet that tilts toward the DC port. Overall, there are more nooks and crannies inside a cabinet table saw than other machines. I hand clean mine out a few times a year.
I think you are being a bit AR here. I have the exact same machines, dust collects in the saw not the shop and who cares from there. It beats scooping the saw out with a dust pan.
I mean, Lord have mercy ... what's the world coming to when things aren't perfect, like they are on TV?
My Unisaw does a pretty decent job of funneling the sawdust to the port, but every once in a great while I have to invoke my patented "two stage" dust collection system:
... poke a stick down its throat and coax some of it toward its doom.
Dumping down the throat is a bit different than having a spinning blade toss around the dust. Unless the motor is getting buried, leave well enough alone.
I think you are on to something there, but it may require you to hole saw a couple of holes in the cabinet of your saw. Right above the floor would be my answer. I have a Deltas contractors saw. I covered the back of the saw at first, but later removed the cover and saw no difference in the dust collection. Not a single opening is covered on my saw and I bet it recovers 90% of the dust. The rest only an over arm guard would get. You need air flow to keep the dust moving. Greg
Yea, I've been pretty close to burying the motor completely. This is kinda whay I started experimenting with it today. So far, I've been able to effectively remove 20 gal of dust from the machine by poring the dust down the throat in less than 10 minutes time with only a couple of handfulls of dust left in the cabinet. (I did clog the whole thing up by dumping a whole 3 gallon bucket down there at once, but that is way more dust than the blade could create in a few seconds anyway.) In theory, this is working! It's just been easier to try and mimic creating gallons of dust by pouring it down there rather than ripping up a bunch of wood just for testing. However, I think I'm in the ballpark close enough now to try testing it by ripping some stock, so in a few minutes I'm gonna fire up the TS to see what happens for real. This may sound silly, but I think what I've created is just a small downdraft system that fits into the saw cabinet and directs the makeup air to pickup the dust on the way to the port. Simple concept, but it's working!! I'll report back soon with real world results.
OK, here's what seems to be working the best so far. I've pretty much made a small downdraft in the bottom of my cabinet saw by putting a piece of plywood with holes and a "funnel" in the cabinet base. It goes something like this, from the bottom up: The factory floor of the saw slopes toward the DC port. The edges of the facory floor were sealed up with duct tape. I then took a piece of plywood about the same size square as the facory floor and mounted it just above the DC port and sealed it up with duct tape (Again, think downdraft table). Two blocks were added on one side between the two floors to keep the plywood level instead of angled like the factory floor. I then drilled a series of 5 3/4" evenly spaced holes right down the center of the plywood directly inline with the DC port. I tried just using pegboard, a series of 1" holes in plywood and a series of
1/2" holes in plywood. It seemed anything less than 3/4" would just clog, and too many 1" holes would lessen the suction to the point where it just didn't work either. I may refine the number and size of holes a little, but I think 3/4" is a good start between keeping good suction and not to small as to clog. I then cut two pieces of plywood and put them in the cabinet to form a "V". They basically create a slope (or funnel) on either side of the cabinet to direct the dust toward the 5 holes I drilled in the plywood. I just finished ripping a bunch of wood into about 400 lf of 1/4" pieces to check how this would perform in real world use. The cabinet only has about a quart or so of dust in the bottom around the holes and has seemed to stabilized there. However, some dust did gather on the outsides of the funnel where there is no holes for dust collection. I need to refine this a litle yet to keep dust out of those areas (more duct tape??) In any case, I'm gonna look over Bill Pentz site this eve (between beers) and see if there is any ideas to refine this thing further. I 'd guess the best DC would be a shroud that would fit around the blade, but it just doesn't seem possible with my saw. As it is though, I've managed to make great progress in a few hours with just 3 pieces of plywood and some duct tape. Will report back with future refinements and some pics soon. Happy New Year! --dave
If you insist on this,;~) you may consider plugging the upper end holes and drill holes in the bottom shelf, put the holes where the dust is going to end up. I did serious wood working for 28+ years with out a dust collector. I am very happy with the dust collector and not having to scoop the dust out any more. Since the dust is contained and easy to empty now I really don't care if the collector gets it all. It does very well with the 15" stationary planer and my BS, two of my biggest creators of nuisance dust.
Something else to consider, not all sad dust is created eaually. My saw fills more quickly when ripping. Ripping creates longer and stringly strands of wood where cross cutting creates a more fine dust that tends to end up in the collector more readily.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.