Shark Cabinet

[Chunky]

Received my Shark before Thanksgiving and checked it over and ran a few test pieces. Throws a lot of chips! Needed a cabinet to put it on, plus saw that some built a little house to collect dust, etc. Attached is my attempt. Put two drawers - one for laptop and one for controller and power supply - will have to monitor temperature to see if I need to put fans in the back of the drawers - the drawers are only half as deep as the cabinet so there is a lot of room behind them.
Still need to drill holes and run the wiring and put the dust collection port in the back. Have a 2 hp dust collector so will probably also need to cut holes to let air in.
Appreciate any comments - good or bad

Don

[BobA]

Looks Good!
You did a nice job Chunky.

Bob

[CountryWoodCrafts]

I think he was talking about comments on the cabinet not by calling him chunky hehe

[bobbyd]

It's a great idea! Everything is enclosed, no mess to clean up afterward! Great job! Thanks for sharing your idea!

[Eagle55]

I'm gonna make some comments and I hope you will not take them as negative criticism, but rather what I am going through trying to decide exactly what to build for my own Shark. I have the benefit as all of us newbies in that we can look at a bunch of different versions and redesign it in our minds before we actually build one. As for me right now, I don't even have my cart built yet, but planning to build a metal frame with rolling capability yet also having leveling capability for a more permanent setting. Again, take my comments a being my thoughts as how it would work for me. All of us have different needs and thoughts, so there is no right of wrong.

Storage places for control box and computer are fine but I have envisioned leaving mine set up and ready to use most of the time. So, planning to have some kind of shelf or pedestal for them both to be accessible yet out of the way (if that is possible). There is one that was posted with a "through the draw front" mounting of the control box. I liked that Idea.

I like the containment concept of this and other "shark tanks". Does it work well to not have any kind of vac system going during the carve time? For many things there is not a big accumulation of sawdust but I have done some that had massive amounts that needed to be dealt with during the carve. The Kent boots and others seem to be a great idea but I'm too much of a "wanna see it work" kind of guy to trust it all covered up with a dust boot and vac hose.

My other thought is that what is to be done with projects longer than the bed? Of course you can open the doors on both ends, but you loose a lot of containment when you do that. I don't know about maybe a smaller door on the bottom of the doors to maybe open a path for the wood and still contain a lot of the dust.

Overall, very nice job. Let us know some feedback after you have used it a while. What features work well and what you would change if you had it to do again.

Roger

[Chunky]

Eagle 55,

Thanks for the comments. The Shark tank works very good - there is a 4" dust collection port in the back about 2" above the deck the Shark sets on. As you say, most jobs, in fact all of my jobs so far, I don't run the dust collector during the cutting operation - the tank keeps the dust from flying all over the shop. After I'm done cutting 1 or 2 jobs, I connect the dust collector, open the two front doors, turn on the dut collector and use the blowing port on my shop vac to direct the dust to the back of the tank and it just gets sucked up by the dust collector (2 hp Grizzly). There is some little space around the front doors and once I turned on the dust collector with the doors closed - it just about sucked the doors off it created such a vacuum inside the tank m- if you make the tank air tight you need to drill holes to suck in fresh air.
As you can see I have the smallest Shark and all of my work is small - longest piece is about 12". I had thought about a trap door in the back for long pieces, but since my work isn't that long I didn't worry about it. You could make a removable plate for long pieces. The tank is made with a frame and 1/8" plexi - too cheap to buy the 1/4" stuff. The frame stiffens it up and it's plenty good. With all the sides and the top made of plexi I can see down from the top and look in from the sides, so I get a good view as it's cutting.
The two drawers in the stand are made with masonite bottoms - the pegboard type of masonite. No dust really gets into the drawers, but I do vacuum them about every 5 or 10 jobs. My laptop fits into the top drawer and I just lift it out and place it on a bench when I'm working. The power supply and the controller are in the 2nd drawer down and seems to be ok. At first I monitored the temperature, but everything stayed relatively cool. I have mounted a power strip on the side and everything works and I'm happy. Could have spent a little more money and little more time and fancied it up a bit, but waited for the Shark to arrive before I built anything so I would get the right dimensions and then I built the cabinet and tank and got right to cutting.
Let me know if you have any other questions - with the amount of dust the Shark makes, I believe you really need a tank to contain it - plus with just the light plexi I used, the noise factor is greatly reduced.
Regards,
Don

[DickL]

Hi
I made a Shark tank sion the back mular to yours. I have the 13 X 24 Shark too. I mounted a bathroom celing fan on the back of the encloser to create a small vacuume and keep the fime dust inside. It works well. I use a shop vac to clean up the big stuff after each cut. My bathroom fan is 50 CFM and I have a furnace filter to reduce the amount of dust that gets sucked in. The fan output goes into an old sock whick collects the really fine stuff. I'm working on a filter to replace the sock.

DickL

[DickL]

H
iThe first sentice should be - I have a Shark tank simulat to yours. The touch pad on this laptog gets me just about every time.

DickL