Vacuum mount and cover not sucking

Building an LR3 and printed the vacuum hose and I have a small shopvac but it seems like the distance from the from the vacuum and board is so much that there is no suction. I just put the hose into the hose socket and added the cover but there is barely any suction unless I put my hand right next to the hole

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Keep your endmill in as far as you can to keep that distance to a minimum. As your cut deeper and deeper the suction gets better.

It will not pull everything out of small cracks but I promise it is doing a lot. Try cutting without it.

I am working on some with room to add a TPU skirt but it is not ready for release yet, dust shoes are not easy to make universal for all uses.

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As I see it, the great challenge with dust shoes is to have one that stays at the same closeness to the work piece independently of the router/mount setup. Not quite like “floating z” on plasma but somewhat like it… but for the dust shoe instead. Maybe more like controlled height, but controlled independently of the router mount.

Back when I had my LowRider as a V2, I seriously pondered ways to try to accomplish this but gave up on it. Now on LR3, the suction is noticeably better and I have not really thought about it again until seeing this thread.

I’m just now thinking maybe it is a free “floating Z” but it has an “adjustable stop” that can be set down near the work material surface, and so when released the shoe “free drops” down to the stop, and rides at that height, barely off the work surface, no matter what Z the router bit is at.

This would be doable much easier on a CNC that does not have the LR gantry that raises and lowers, but on LR that moving gantry gains the stiffness increasing nearest the work surface, which helps eliminate chatter and runout issues.

I just had a wild thought. Imagine a small stepper motor added just for dust shoe height adjustment during cuts. It could be wired to respond to Z height GCode commands, but in reverse to the wiring of the actual Z steppers. When the Z steppers get a signal to lower by say 1mm, the dust shoe would raise by 1mm at the same time. Thus, it would stay at the height you first set it at, all through the cutting process.

Most cuts are not very deep so a moving shoe is not a big deal.

A long enough skirt and it will work at most common depths. I would venture to say most people do not cut more than 1/2" at a time very often. So a skirt about 3/4" would work just fine. I paused working on the new mounts with skirt option and dust shoe to work on the site, shop, and instructions updates.

At the same time I cut 1/2" mdf most everyday and my dust shoe catches everything but the 1/8" slots. As it is now it works pretty good. I tried a tape skirt and that helps a bit more. I see it as something that can be improved but is not currently my #1 priority.

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How is this coming along? :slightly_smiling_face:

Side tracked with video making…And I tried to do a whole new dust boot so it got a bit overwhelming. I just need to edit what I have.

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