Enclosing contractor’s saw for dust coll
prairiescl
| Posted in Power Tools and Machinery on
Does someone make a connector/shroud/gizmo to connect a DC to a Delta contractor’s saw? The plastic floor pan with the 4″ hole in the middle seem futile – the back of the cabinet is still wide open. I seem to remember an ad for a shroud that bolted to the carriage and enclosed the blade. Is there any such thing?
Aside from that, I think enclosing the motor in a cabinet whose top acts as an outfeed tables seems the only alternative. Has anyone done this with any success?
Thanks,
Scott
Replies
Hi Scott, I have not seen a cover for the back of you contractor saw for sale. A year or two ago there was a write up on how to do it yourself. I think it was in a Fine Woodworking or American Woodworker magazine.
On the contractor saw the motor hangs off the back of the saw. The article discussed how to enclose the cabinet part but yet allowed the motor to remain outside the enclosure. They used a piece of plywood and cut a banana shape where the belt moves from side to side when you tilt the machine to 45 degrees. When you measure the belt movement to make the template remember the motor sits higher when you lift the blade up and lower when the blade is lowered.
Although this will leave a fairly sizeable hole in the plywood just remember that you need to leave a large enough hole in the back plate to replace the air you just removed with the dust collector. I have a small 1 HP duct collector and it moves 600 cubic feet a minute.
Peter
The article mentioned was in Fine Woodworking. It has a dimensioned dust panel pattern for a Delta Contractor's saw back. Sorry I can't say which issue. I'll look it up when I have a minute. I suppose you could mock something up with cardboard and keep tweaking it till you get it right, then use the carboard as a template.
I have the same set-up you do. I plugged my Delta DC into the bottom, and with 1250cfm suction, not much sawdust gets out. The little that does is no worse that the blow-by on the top of the saw. The reason I didn't close in the back, is that is the best way to get into the gears for maintenance.
Hope this helps, Len (Len's Custom Woodworking)
This conversation came up a couple of months ago, and the conversants agreed, if I remember right, that it's pretty hard to construct a plywood back that allows the motor and bracket to travel it's path through various angles (although, per that article mentioned, it's certainly do-able).
One suggestion (Steve?) was to use heavy plastic in a shroud-like manner. I'm gonna try it at some point, being carful it doesn't have any possibility of getting tangled in the belt.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Could you please tape record the sound made when the drive belt snorks up the hefty bag? Your message lead me to believe that you mean something limp-ish like polyethylene. I would guess that it would be a real challenge to prevent something non-rigid from being pulled in by the suction, then consumed by the belt.
Talk to Steve, he's the one who's actually installed the plastic option (pond liner, or something, I think -- see his message above). I believe he also mentioned that he cut some slits to keep the air flow sufficient to keep the sawdust moving to the vacuum/DC.
Some day, I'll get him to take a pic of the back of his saw! LOL!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
My solution was to notch a piece of 1/4" plywood to slide onto the back when the blade is at 90 degrees. I slide it off when I need to tilt the saw blade, which isn't very often.
One thing to remember, is that if you seal it too well, you won't have any airflow at all and the sawdust will cease to move down the tube. You can use a piece of pond liner with a cutout for the belt guard. You simply attach it with velcro strips. I have one on my Jet Contractors saw and found that it restricted the air flow way to much so I made cuts from the bottom up about 6" every two inches across. This gives it enough airflow to move the dust and keeps it from flying out the back.
Steve - in Northern California
PrairieSCL,
I bought a piece of 2" foam rubber and cut it to fit. It doesn't even matter if the belt rubs a little bit, but for under $2.00 I cut way down on the dust.
See if this site will give you any ideas. I didn't get as fancy. Instead I used cardboard duct taped to the back. That way I can easily remove it for bevel cuts but if I forget, it just makes a hell of a racket but doesn't ruin my segmented belt.
http://home.pacbell.net/jdismuk/sawdust.html
Scott,
I had an older Craftsman contrator's tablesaw that had much the same problem as the one you're facing. Here is what I did.
While those square "tablesaw dust ports" as sold by Woodworker's Warehouse lack much of a slope to funnel sawdust towards the 4" dia opening, I used it anyway. (I've heard of people actually constructing sloped sheet metal bins for this purpose. But it seemed like too much work for me).
Once that was installed, I attached a 4" dia PVC elbow and 12" long pipe stub to the 4" dia outlet. I needed to make an adapter to allow a 4" flex hose to fit over the end (The pipe stub made it less of a reach to attach the flex hose). But other than that, the hard part was done.
I went to home depot and bought a package of flexible magnetic sheets for covering HVAC vents in your home. I used this to the large gaps in the sheet metal body of the saw (Like the curved oval hole inthe from of the case where the angle of the blade is set).
I also used some pipe insulation crammed in the gaps between the underside of the cast iron tabletop and the body. Don't worry about starving the DC for air yet. They'll be more than enough room for air flow once your done.
The last thing I did was to cut a piece of 3/8" plywood to fit across the back of the saw. I called this the "shroud". I made sure to leave ample room for the motor mounts, and v-belt. Leaving this room allowed for the air flow needed to make dust collection feasable. To hold the shroud in place, I used (4) small rare earth magents as sold by Lee Valley. They held the shroud tightly enough.
No provision was made for leving a gap to accomodate the motor swivelling when you bevel the blade. When I want to do that, I removed the shroud. I really didn't bevel with this saw all that much. So it wasn't an issue.
When this saw was hooked to my 1 Hp Penn State DC1B, the dust collection worked well enuogh. While sawdust STILL came off the blade, the bulk was contained in the saw body and sucked into the DC.
Good luck,
Dominic
Scott,
I have seen an article with pictures of how to enclose the back of a contractor's saw. Try this address: http://newwoodworker.com/jetdust.html.
If that doesn't work, go to http://www.newwoodworker, select tips & tricks and you'll see an article on CS dust collection.
I'm still trying to find the time to make one myself.
Good Luck,
Rick
This will look too simple, but it works for me.
It's a plastic floor runner attached with adhesive velcro. when you do miters it tears away, Then I go and reattach the strands when I go back to 90*
john g
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