I currently have a Milwaukee 5615 handheld router. I bought it because it had a micro-adjustment knob which works great in the router table. It’s not the most powerful machine, but I haven’t needed more yet. To my knowledge, milwaukee doesn’t make a plunge base for this unit, so I think i’m going to need to upgrade to a plunge router at some point, because i’m starting to cut a lot of mortises with the router.
My question is about dust collection attachments that come with routers. How much of the dust does it actually get? I’m sure each brand has it’s own attachments (mine obviously does not have any), but efficient are these things?
Comments and specific brand suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks.
Bob
Replies
It depends on the router and type of routing you are doing. When your router catches the dust at the source, and you are plunge cutting mortises, you will get most of it. When I edge rout, even on my Festool routers, which have "great" integrated dust collection, a lot escapes. It seems like it doesn't work until you try without it. So you still need a dust mask, and you still have a lot of cleanup to do after.
My experience is similar to Daryl's. Photo shows a workaround to catch the dust which escapes from the onboard collector. Work is placed on 2 'T' supports. The large flex duct goes to the central dust collector. The green hose is attached to the router dust port and to a Fein shop vac.
I always thought that one of the big advantages of Festool routers was the dust control issue. With your experience, would you say that the Festool dust collection still is better than other routers with their dust collection mechanisms? I'm thinking about the Triton router, which has a built in dust port/chip collector system.
My Festool sanders are such a wonder at dust collection, I may have assumed to much. I did put a DC shroud on my old PC 390 router, which didn't work at all. So I don't know if it's better with other types of routers. I really thought it didn't work until the time I figured, "why bother." So I would guess on non-contained types of routing, like edge or surface use, you get maybe 60% pickup, maybe a bit more. Also, the chips and dust don't seem to fly as far.
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