I’ve had a clearvue for a few years now but never really had the hoods worked out. Well, with my sawstop find I decided to spend the weekend in the shop and get it worked out. The result: A SharkGuard, box around the router lift, and some ABS and PVC ducting. Couple of notes:
– my cyclone is in a closet with a sliding door – see pics of open and closed. This was critical to making it tolerable in the shop and probably brought the noise down 10 db easily.
– the SharkGuard is awesome! Before, the saw would spit quite a bit of dust of off the top of the blade due to the zero clearance insert. Now, less dust than the new SawStop guard on their site is generated. I had him make my Shark with a 4″ port at the direct guidance of Bill Pentz himself, and also had him make it out of thicker plastic and add the front roller wheel. It works like a charm. The arm is 4″ ABS and can be removed on the side for wider stock.
– the ClearVue has 6″ main run so I broke that out on the saw leg to 4″ to the lower cabinet, 4″ to the SharkGuard, and tapped two 2″ lines to the router head and box. It does a great job of controlling the dust.
– all ducting connections to the saw are flexible so that even though the ducting is rigid and attached to the saw body/frame the duct connections allow for some give and wiggle. I am thinking about making a short extension table for the whole saw just to hide all of the plumbing and have a flat surface to hang jigs / blades / etc.
Replies
Brad,
Interesting set up. Looks like it should do the job.
Is that barely visible wire running from the back table edge (router side) the only support for the main run? (the white and black junction exit) and what is the duct support for the saw itself at the cabinet end? Hard to tell.
Thanks
Boiler
the ducting is supported at 3 points today:
- at the 4" cabinet saw outlet
- at the duct junction using heavy gauge aluminum wire to the main saw rail
- at the back of the blade outlet with 3/4" ply and heavy zip ties
this is temporary, but surprisingly strong. In the weeks to come I am going to make a table extension running the full width of the saw which will incorpoate solid brackets for it all and space to hang stuff up.
How do you vent the DC closet? Unvented, you are building up a tremendous amount of backpressure that affects the operation of the DC.
To address air release what you can't see in the attached pic is a louvered vent (4x12) behind the beer fridge (under the coiled hose, close to the floor) that is running through a verticle bent channel to let the air out. There is also some slippage at the bottom of the door.
If the vent is 4" x 12", you might consider increasing the ventilation area. I have a 2 hp cyclone and total of 5 sq ft of vented/filtered return air and the 4' x 12' storage area housing the DC still has noticeable backpressure.
Brad ,
Very nice setup, thanks for the pics.
I do not see any blast gates. Do you have other machines hooked up to this collector?
Blast Gates: there is one on each major 6" leg off of the main trunk ... since I am a one man show in a 18x18 shop this is OK.
Since the cumulative surface area of my ducting is 25in^2 into a 6 inch (27.5 in^2) then I jsut have them all open at once - router and saw.
Ducts to miter saw, a sanding station, and an adjustable hookup for bandsaw / sander / jointer are in the works.
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