Dust shoe and dust collection

Mostly Printed CNC - MPCNC Advice
1

Hi guys,

CNC is great, but it makes a huge deal of dust. So, I’m currently designing a dust shoe.

But I’m wondering what is the best practice here?
Should the dust shoe move together with the router?
Should it always stays at the same height?
What is the necessary vacuum power needed for a dust shoe to work correcly?

For now, I’ve printed a few parts, my plan is to use two PVC ducts, one going each side of the router and arriving at the dust shoe. On the other side, the pvc pipes will be connected to a flexible tube which will go to the vacuum cleaner.

I bet many of you already did dust collection, so any suggestion here is welcome :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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I found this dust collector a good idea:

He took the hairs of a hand-broom to make a flexible but somewhat closed room for collecting the dust.

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This was a hard hunt for me as well. I personally liked Tom’s design the best so far. Here https://www.v1engineering.com/forum/topic/mpcnc-add-on-dw660-mount-with-vacuum-attachment/

This fit absolutely perfect and so far does not get in the way or block Ock your view of the bit. Plus bit changes are quick and easy.

The vac pipe could be tricky to print but I used good place and a slow speed.

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Yikes, that one would take me weeks to build. :slight_smile:

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A combination of both would be nice

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I’m using (or was using since my machine is currently dead) this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:410266

It works quite well with a powerful vacuum for fine dust such as MDF dust. It’s also very easy to change bits with it.

The only thing is that you cannot use the default bottom mount from here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:944952

You will need to use 2 top mounts to hold it in place, but so far it works quite well.

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I wish I could edit that previous post to correct the spelling errors. @ Bill, Why do you say that?

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Brian, the complexity of the pieces along with the detail work for things like the brush. I’ve seen others that used something like the brush edge you can get for a door, wrapped around the dust shoe. That would certainly be easier.

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@Bill, almost none of the hardware stores around me carry door sweeps that are brushes. I lucked out and found one at Ace hardware. Pretty sure it was the last one the store has carried, because I haven’t seen one there since. McMaster Carr carries the dust brush material though.

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I really like the one @Jens posted. This is exactly the kind of system I would like to do.
The only thing I do not like is the position of the vacuum tube. I don’t want something this heavy this far from the Z axis, it will introduce a bad torque force I would like to avoid.

For now, I will experiment with a quite basic system, with the dust soe attached to the bottom of the router. The part is already printed, just need to find some suitable material to use as the brushes. If It works fine, I’ll try to get inspiration from the video Jens posted and come up with an adjustable sytem, fixed directly to the gantry.

I forgot to take pictures of the printed part yesterday so I’ll post them later, meanwhile here is what the 3D looks like.

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Well, it is done, if anyone is interested you can see the result of the first version here:

So far, it seems to work great!
I think the limit of this will be the quite limited power of my vacuum cleaner as well as the fact that this kind of dust shoe moves together with the Z axis, which is not ideal for deep cuts.

1 Like
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Here is what I did. Don’t completely solve the problem but significantly reduce the dust. Putting a shoe on would solve the problem forever.

2 Likes
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That’s pretty cool. I like the idea of using the existing down tubes for sucking up the sawdust.

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Was just searching for a hands free vacuum system. Definitely going to pursue this “up the down tube” idea. Thanks for sharing!