OK, so much for the update. In making these, I used the bandsaw, the tablesaw and the drill press. I hook up a shop vac to my bandsaw when i am using it, and it does a pretty good job of collecting the dust. Here is what was produced from this operation:
The table saw was used to crosscut the racks to length and to clean up the bandsawn edges. I didnt bother to hook up my shop vac to the dust bag i have underneath the tablesaw. Here is the dust it created.
not bad huh? That leaves only the drill press. I have seen some god-awful rig-ups that people use for collecting dust from drill presses and lathes, but they seem clumsy at best. I bet in most shops WITH full blown dust collection the drill press is not connected to the central system. So while a fully plumbed dust collection system would have saved me the "hassle" of cleaning up the mess in the two pictures above, it would have done me no good cleaning this up:
are you kidding me? for reference, the base of that drill press is 4" tall. Here's some interesting math--i drilled 15 holes 1 5/8" in diameter ~2 1/4" deep. Thats a total of 70 cubic inches of material, which is just over a liter.
I learned 2 things building these trays.
1) it doesnt take a lot of material to make a really big mess (1L of wood = that big ass pile, which filled up my 5 gallon shop vac.)
2) Dust collection would have saved me about 2 seconds of clean up on this particular job.
2 comments:
I totally agree with clean-up in the aftermath of doing any machine work in the shop.
But - and this is a BIG but - it is NOT the large stuff you show in the photos that might matter in 20 or 30 years. It is the stuff that is so small that it stays in the air, ready for you to inhale.
THAT is the stuff we worry about when we talk dust collection. Please note, we talk about *dust collection*, in contrast to *chip collection*.
That is my $0.02 for today. Thanks!
I agree with Al, but frankly I'm a little less concerned about the inhalation. I recently moved from a garage workshop space with no DC, to an exclusive workshop space (also with no DC, but I'm working on that). As a result of not having my table saw share space with my kids' bikes and such, their toys are simply a TON cleaner. And, as a result, the kids don't come to me complaining, "there's nothing to do outside" because their toys are actually usable.
I like the blog (yep, found you on TWW). Keep it up.
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