My current setup for dust collection system has my Harbor Frieght collector on the other side of a wall (in the unfinished garage side of my basement) while my LowRider and other workshop items are on the finished side. The 4" PVC pipe from the HF collector go up to the ceiling before coming through the wall. I carry the pipe suspended along the ceiling on the finished side. I used my 3D printed zip tie mounts to suspend the pipe. My designs for those are available on Printables:
From there I have three drops from above. Actually two, but the second one splits into two. One of the drops is directly over my LowRider table, about in the center (close but not exactly centered). From there it gets changed at the blast gate down from 4" to 2.5" hose. I use a distinctly low-tech approach to hold the middle of the 2.5" hose with a thick strand made of multiple rubber bands. This is anchored at the lower end to the 2.5" hose and at the upper end it is anchored to the 4" pipe overhead.
I seem to be marginally OK with this, although it could surely be improved. I have had too much else going on to focus much more attention on it.
I have the same dust collector but I fitted it with a replacement rikoh impeller to boost performance- I can get 1200 cfm through 5” duct. I have low-ish ceilings so I run duct over the floor, with quick attach magnet collars so I can move it out the way quickly.
Anyway- I think I’ll do a swing out arm from the wall next to the far end of the table and use it to suspend 2.5” hose over the middle of the table.
I have a NEJE master 7w laser and was wondering the same. It would be awesome to mount it to the cnc without removing the laser. If this is possible, i may redesign the router mount to add a side mount for the laser.
The only upgrade I made to my HF dust collector was to order a nice big pleated filter canister to replace the filter bag that comes with it. Huge improvement. The Stumpy Nubs woodworking channel on YouTube has a great video explaining why and how helpful this is. I ordered the one he recommended.
I have a separate 100watt CO2 laser, as a stand alone unit with its own CNC system in a massive and heavy floor stand cabinet (with its own casters) bought from OMtech Laser.
I have been interested in possibly mounting a diode based laser onto my LR3, for access to larger projects than my big CO2 laser can handle, but have not done anything like that yet, with part of the reason being I’m a little concerned about how to corral the fumes and smoke.
It does occur to me that one could attach a diode laser to my pen/drag knife mount, or remix to accommodate one.
Agreed. If you are recirculating the air indoors, Wynn environmental filters are the only way to go, with respect to health/safety and clean air.
I port mine outside. I’m a virologist and my wife is a lung cancer specialist- we have no interest in having that dust stay in the shop. I wear a P100 mask and have 2 air cleaners running when I do anything that produces dust or chips- even if it’s a 15 second cut with a circular saw.
The guy who had this house before us was a woodworker- huge 1000 sqft shop in the basement, all studs, no walls, no dust collection.
I spent 3 weeks after we moved in cleaning mdf dust off the trim work in the master suite and kids bedrooms, 2 stories up. The AC was spewing it everywhere.
That mount would work, if I could beef up the springs to prevent flex, flatten the front face and add two screw holes in order to bolt the laser mount plate to.
So “remixing” refers to pulling an existing 3-D model into a 3-D editing program and making changes to its design, so that you can print exactly what you want.
My remix work is done usually in SketchUp. In particular I use a free version of SketchUp.
My design for the drag knife/pen mount is a two part piece in which one part attaches to the LowRider with the pen mount piece having been attached to that. I was thinking that the pen mount part itself is what would get remixed totally. Therefore you would not have any springs at all, since they are on the part that would not be present (in current form) in the remix.
It’s also common to bring more than one model into a remix effort and combine them, and in this case you could bring elements from my mount in with plates from other models that have the business end that the laser attaches to.
So I printed ‘mount part A’ and with a little effort, I should be able to make an adapter plate out of 3mm acrylic or plywood to ‘bridge’ part A and the neje mount. I’ll need to file off the little ridge first, and I might have the required hardware somewhere already (will need to get longer m5 boots for attaching part A to the gantry)
