Dust Collection machine

[CyberBiker]

Recently acquired Shark HD Extended with dust shoe. If I connect my usual shop vac to the dust shoe, it sucks so much of the brush into the hose that very little dust is collected and the vacuum sounds like the hose is plugged or nearly so. Guess my Vac sucks too much for this application.

At the moment, a shroud around the machine is not going to work in my shop, don't have enough room for it.

Next Wave does not recommend connecting a 4" dust collector hose directly to the CNC due to its weight.

What effective dust collection strategies have more experienced users found practical when using their CNC Machines.

Any input appreciated.

Thanks

[Rando]

CyberBiker:

Maybe a blast-gate style "valve" can lower the amount of air pulled? Technically, a side-hole or open Y in the vacuum tube will also shunt some of the pressure. If you put the blast gate in that side vent, you could adjust the pressure in the main tube without restricting the main tube's cross-section. The closer the shunt valve is to the final end, the more of the main extraction tube length will be having the higher air volume, improving material clearance of the tube while also reducing intake flow rate at the material removal opening

I do the opposite, working in aluminum, I need a chip-blower. In that case, I use the Loc-Line series of lines, valves, manifolds, nozzles, etc., and I use the valves to adjust the amount of air from each nozzle.

And failing that, maybe the cheapest solution is to get a much smaller shop-vac. I use the $49 small plastic ones, since running during a multi-hour CNC run isn't what most shop vacs are happy doing. Among the ones I have, the smaller ones are quieter, also a bonus for long runs. That way, if the motor/bearings die, it will at least be a low-cost thing and only stop that one function, not the whole shop. For recycling purposes, to have a "clean" waste stream, I use separate vacuums for aluminum chips and then anything else. That way my aluminum chips don't have contaminants in recycling. In the 2.5 years I 've been running, only one of the little units died, and that was due to a hole in the filter that let metal chips in to the motor. D'oh!

You can also get around the too-heavy issue of the larger tubing by suspending it from the ceiling on a spring that takes like 90+% of the weight of the haging tubes. I do that with my two air tubes, my mister, the spindle power and coolant: they're all suspended from the ceiling now, with almost no weight on the gantry or the z-axis carriage. Picture below:



Regards,

Thom

[CyberBiker]

What I have tried so far:

Since the Shop Vac route didn't work so well, I found a 12' piece of 2 1/2" flexible tubing from Rockler. Suspended it in the center from the ceiling. One end goes into the dust shoe on the CNC, the other into a 2 1/2-4" adaptor on the end of a 4" run of dust collector hose going into my main dust collector. That seems to be working pretty well, and is collecting much more material than the shop vac.

Thanks for your suggestions.

[Kayvon]

Dave, would you mind posting a picture of your setup with the suspended hose? I'd enjoy seeing it and it might provide more ideas to other readers, too.

[CyberBiker]

Here is a picture of the dust collection hose from the ceiling. Nothing fancy since I didn't know if it would work. I did run the machine to every extreme to see if the hose would reach, it does. One end goes in to a 4"-2 1/2' adaptor to my main dust collection machine. Plan on making some modifications to my primary ducting to allow permanent hookup with blast gate for CNC.

Shark HD4 extended Dust Collection hose

Shark HD4 extended Dust Collection hose

[Kayvon]

That looks great. Suspending from the ceiling was a clever idea. Also, the cut area on that thing is impressive. My model offers less than a quarter of that whole area. You could do custom cabinet doors as one solid piece, or a whole host of other ideas. Very cool.