Quote Originally Posted by Malcolm Schweizer View Post
I am probably at minimum CFM for this saw with a 1.5 HP dust collector, but the gap where the dust collection is was a big difference in dust collection working or not working. I have the collector directly hooked to this saw. I still feel the gap where I taped it up is an area of improvement. I have maxed out the breaker box without doing a long run to another box, so I'm not going to upgrade the dust collection any time soon. Now that I taped up where there was a big gap, it works fairly well. The problem is where I taped up, there would be a 1/4" or more gap when the door is shut. The door is what closes that "V" off, and without any sort of seal, it just doesn't do that. I don't get why they don't make it with a faceplate to match what I did with the tape.

Most folks are running much larger DC systems than what you have hooked to it. Moving the sawdust requires CFM and velocity. Restricting the inlet air will reduce CFM. You've found a compromise that works for the CFM and static pressure your DC operates at, but it wouldn't be a good solution for larger DC systems. I have a 2 hp 1200 cfm DC and it couldn't remove all the sawdust either when I first hooked it up. I did a bunch of static pressure testing and found the bag filters and cyclone were robbing a significant amount of flow. That prompted me to reconfigure the whole thing, including eliminating the bag filters and blowing the air outside. After that, I had enough CFM at the bandsaw to handle the sawdust w/o a problem.

John