dust collection on General 650

[patrick ramsey]

I have a General 650 bought new about three years ago. Not happy with dust collection. Every so often I have to open access door and vacum out residual dust and chips. I think the problem is tha slanted panels in the saw body do not have a severe enough angle. So while the majority of the dust is collected there is alwasys a residual build up. I replaced the 4" hose connector with a 6". Didn't seem to help much . Has any one expiermented with this issue? If so, what were your results? I read a sugestion (not about a general 650) that the writer closed the ("smile opening") that the hieght adjuster is in, by putting an adhesive backed board over the opening with a slit for the adjustment wheel shaft. Any ideas would be appreciated. this is a little frustratiing.

[Narayan Nayar]

Patrick,

I also have a T650. I agree that not everything in the cabinet is collected. I've got the 650 hooked up to a relatively powerful cyclone w/ a 5" flex hose and 6" ducting, and yeah, not everything gets sucked up.

I don't think it's a problem with the ramp, per se. If I remember correctly, I think it's that the hole to which the flex hose connects is a few inches up from the bottom of the ramp. Increasing the angle of the ramp won't really do much for you.

That said, I wouldn't go so far as to say the dust collection is poor. The dust which settles at the bottom of the box basically fills the gap between the bottom of the box and the bottom of the inlet. Anything that falls on top of that seems to get sucked up really well, actually.

If you want to fix the problem, I'd find some way of filling the space between the bottom of the box and the inlet. If you want to solve this through adjusting the ramp, I'd actually either raise the whole ramp up or raise the bottom of the ramp.

I'm not in the motor box very often, so this doesn't bug me.

[Steven J Corpstein]

I have a 650 that is about the same age as yours. I chiseled the factory 4" port off very carefully, then increased the hole size to a 5" to allow me to connect all of my machines to my Oneida with the same duct.

The 5" came out slightly below the bottom edge which worked out good for getting everything in the pan. The only residual dust I have left after using it is a small amount in the bottom of the door.

[John Ricci]

I have a 650R and one thing that helped in my situation was to wax the ramp and it seemed to improve things a bit. I have only a small 1hp DC so not all of the dust gets sucked up. Every so often I just open the motor cover with the DC running and with a hand brush I sweep whatever is left inside down into the hose and it all gets sucked out.

J.R.

[Mark Carlson]

The same thing happens with my 650. I've been trying to improve my dust collection lately on all my machines. Last night I removed the ramp. I wanted to see if I could reposition it towards the back. Seems doable. I was thinking of creating a new 6in port in the back.

I was thinking the 4in port on the side was causing a lot of the problems. 4in being two small and the port is in the worst possible spot for my dust collection. It requires me to do a 180 degree turn. That can't be helping.

Patrick did you increase your port size to 6in in the same location or are you using a 6in hose reduced down to 4in?

~mark

[patrick ramsey]

My collection system is a 2 HP onieda cyclone. It does very well on everything else in the shop. I ground off the original 4" port and replace it with a 6" port screwed to the body in the exact same location that the 4'' port was. The build up is occuring in the last few inches of the bottom of the ramp, as well as in the door. I investigated increasing the ramp angle, but I'm concerned that it will interfeer with the blade shrod when changing the blade angle. The door portion is not nealy as bad as the ramp. Have any of you who have 650s tried closing off openings, or increading the ramp angle? If so, what was the result.

[patrick ramsey]

The same thing happens with my 650. I've been trying to improve my dust collection lately on all my machines. Last night I removed the ramp. I wanted to see if I could reposition it towards the back. Seems doable. I was thinking of creating a new 6in port in the back.

I was thinking the 4in port on the side was causing a lot of the problems. 4in being two small and the port is in the worst possible spot for my dust collection. It requires me to do a 180 degree turn. That can't be helping.

Patrick did you increase your port size to 6in in the same location or are you using a 6in hose reduced down to 4in?

~mark
Mark if you decide to change your ramp in any way let me kno whow it turns out.