It's been too cold to get much done in the shop, but finally today - a warm day. Felt good to get out and get some machines humming.
This winter I did get a portable dust collector made. It's kinda Frankenstein-ish, but it works great! I had a big shop-vac that I was using but the filter clogged up so fast it was useless. So, I tried a Dust Deputy cyclone with it but it's so small it really robbed my vac's power. So I downloaded some plans for a cyclone based on the vac's ratings and made this...
Crazy looking, yeah. But it really sucks.
I made a plywood column that has the cyclone in the middle, a drawer to collect the dust at the bottom, and an upper chamber with a hepa filter. It's really fantastic. I added a muffler to the outlet side to quiet it down, cuz it was a screamer.
I put a very flexible 12' hose on it and casters on the bottom, it easily wheels around the shop. I made quick adapters for all the tools, so it's easy to move and plug into whatever tool I'm using. And the drawer might seem small, but it only takes a minute to pull it and dump it on the mulch pile. A fraction of the dust makes it past the cyclone, so I will have to clean the filter now and then, but 99.something percent of the dust goes in the drawer. I'd say if you don't have a cyclone on your dust collector, it would be worth your time to make one. A free spreadsheet calculator and drawing generator are avail online. I'll post the link when I find it again.
I also just finished a magnetic fence for the band saws. I made it out of some blocks of glued-up mahogany, kind of plywood like, but 2" thick, and the plys running crossways. I found the blocks in an old warehouse. Been making jigs and stuff out of them. Anyway, the fence has two rare earth magnets set in the bottom, and two cams on the side to release the grip. Really surprising how strong the hold is, and with the cams, it easily moves around until you flip the cams up and it locks in place. This is just a shop made version of one you can buy. $7 bucks for the magnets, vs. $70 for the mag fence at the store.
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