Sawstop new overhead guard dust collection

[David Schmaus]

Morning everyone,

Well I have spent the last two weeks "getting to know" my new saw and now its time to get the dust collection hooked up to the new overhead guard. I temporarely hooked up a shop vac just to see how well it works and I was extremely pleased.

The guard takes a 1 1/2 inch fitting. I'm thinking running a 2 1/2 to it with an adapter.

I am just trying to engineer how the hose will be secured from overhead. You can see my 4" dust collection pipe is on the ground so it will need to come up the side wall, over, then down. I need a way to secure it out of the way when the guard is not in use. It would be cool to have the hose available to use as a "shop vac" to suck off shavings and dust from the top of the saw after doing lets say dados.

Here are a couple of pics of my setup..

Anyone have theirs hooked up yet?

[Jeffrey Makiel]

David,
An 1 1/2" fitting is awfully small for use with a dust collector. It sounds like this hood requires a shop vac which has more vacuum pressure.

Please let us know how it works out.

-Jeff :)

[Michael Morton]

I'm definitely interested in your results, as I'm about to receive my Sawstop PCS and am researching how to "best" hookup the blade guard 1.5" port.

[John Harden]

My Felder has a similiar blade guard with dust port that has a quick disconnect that installs on the riving knife. Felder uses a 50mm (about 2") port on the blade guard.

I just ran about 2 feet of 50mm hose up to a Rockler universal connector (the kind that tapers) where the hose size jumps to 2.5" for about 4 feet, then connects to an adapter on a 4" blast gate.

If you're interested, I can snap a picture when I get home, but it's a pretty basic setup. Hose off the blade guard just goes straight up, and is suspended off a bungee cord attached to the ceiling. The blast gate is off to the right near the right side of the saw table. The shape of the blade guard is such that when I need to remove it, it will rest on the handle of the blast gate, which sort of acts like a hook. Hope that makes sense. Very little dust escapes the guard.

You'll want to step up from that 1.5" port to something with more diameter as soon as you can to maintain adequate CFM. My cyclone churns out about 1400 cfm, which does a good job of pulling the dust. Most of this goes to the 120mm (5") port on the saw.

For your setup, I'd recommend just running that 4" pipe up the wall, then making a 90 degree turn where you can then install a blast gate and reducer. You can suspend the hose from the ceiling with a bungee cord, similiar to my setup.

Rigid pipe would provide more airflow than flex hose, but I like the flexibility of the hose so I can easily remove the blade guard when necessary.

My thinking was that if it is easy to remove and re-install then I'm more likely to leave it on, which is a good thing from both a safety and dust collection stand point.

Regards,

John

[Walt Caza]

Looking good David,
I grew impatient waiting for the SS version, and so went ahead with a Felder.(link to Creek thread)
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=83691

The Felder guard performs well, and compares nicely with the original SS industrial guard, as seen here.
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=87896&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1210092857 (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=87896&d=1210092857)

50mm port = 2". All credit to Creeker Roy Wall for his elegant solution.
Good luck with your set-up,
I hope it sucks!
Walt

[Richard Gibson]

David: I went with PVC pipe around the table and tied into the 4" outlet that had a 21/2" Y on it (from Woodcraft). I suspended the PVC from the ceiling. Works fine for me. When I take the dust cover off, I just lay it on the table I'm not using. Guess you could put a shelf or hook on the suspension.

[John Harden]

David, here's some pics of how I hooked mine up. Its the same Felder blade guard that Walt purchased. Doesn't matter what brand you have. The piping/hose routing is all similiar.

Like I said in my prior post, I like having the ability to quickly get the hose out of the way of the saw table if I'm doing work where a rigid pipe may interfere.

Hope these give you some ideas.

Regards,

John

[John Harden]

Couple more pics. Nothing fancy, but it was inexpensive and best of all, easy on/easy off. As a result, I leave the blade guard on where it belongs.

I'm losing some air flow by going with flex, particularly since the 50mm (2") section is about 2.5 feet long, but the narrow size ensures the hose doesn't get in the way of cutting operations.

At the very least, it should at least give you some ideas.

Regards,

John

[Barry Vabeach]

I have the PCS and ran a 2 1/2 flex to some pvc, which I hooked up to the guard. I ran the 2 1/2 to a 4 x 4 x 2 1/2 Y and put a baffle in the Y with a 2 1/2 hole so it is in effect 4 inches going to the dust collector, and 2 1/2 to the dust guard, and 2 1/2 - due to the baffle - to the 4 inch port at the bottom of the cabinet and that has worked pretty well. If you route it right, you might not need the baffle, put the y had to go right near the cabinet port with my duct work, so I ended up doing a big loop with the 2 1/2 piping to get to the dust guard. Before I did the piping, I just used a shop vac and the above table dust collection through the guard was excellent.

[John Petsche]

Great ideas

[John Coloccia]

I would, and did, just buy the SS kit for this. I plumbed my own in for years, but the SS system is so much nicer and simpler that there's little reason, other than cost, to do anything else in my opinion.

[glenn bradley]

+1 on John's statement. I just knew the little hose on the stock model wouldn't work well. I even started to run larger hose before I stopped long enough to see how the stock unit worked. It works great with a very small amount of air flow(???). Seems the guard's internal geometry is quite well designed. I guess this is one of those cases where technology gets the nod over sheer horsepower. I have always half-jokingly said that in cars and music systems, I prefer raw horsepower to technoilogy. The SS overarm is not one of those things ;-)

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I run a smaller hose from my dust collector along the ceiling and drop it down to connect to the saw stop over-head dust-collector. I can take a picture of it if you like, but it is not overly remarkable to look at.

This works well, sufficiently well, in fact, that it has occasionally sucked up thin off-cuts about 6" long into the hood and I have to do a little work (not a lot of work) to get it out. My point is that a regular vacuum is not required to connect to this. I could easily do that if it seemed like it would help, but I have no particular need.

Been happy with mine.

[Bill Graham]

I run it off the Fein vac with the hose suspended from the ceiling. I've been amazed at just how well it works.

Bill

[David Kuzdrall]

I just have my shop vac hose plugged straight in and draped over my out feed table, super simple and I have yet to snag anything on it...it is a trip hazard however but my entire shop is a trip hazard since everything is on wheels and it doubles as a garage for my wife when the weather gets nasty.

btw, I have a shark guard on order that I will mount overhead. The guard is somewhat modular in design now in that you can swap out DC port size between 2.5" and 4" and you can choose to mount it to your riving knife / splitter or an overhead arm. I really like this concept since it an grow with me as I slowly upgrade duct collection. Right now I have a HF single stage DC that in no way can pull enough air through the lower saw port and an upper blade guard. Until I have a 3hp cyclone I will just use my shop vac / dust deputy for the over blade DC.

You may want to check out the shark guard website for several mounting options to your original question.

[Kevin Womer]

I would, and did, just buy the SS kit for this. I plumbed my own in for years, but the SS system is so much nicer and simpler that there's little reason, other than cost, to do anything else in my opinion.

I am with John on this, I went with the same system and it is pretty nice. I think the greatest benefit is it is easy to connect and remove when you need it or not. It is a pricey add on to the SS, but one I am pleased with overall. I did watch a review of this system on Matt's basement WS I believe, and he mentioned getting more suction by putting a blast gate on the 4'' port and partially closing it. I havent tried this, not sure I will as suction seems fine to me right now.

[Pete Janke]

My SS guard is retrofitted to the splitter on my Grizzly G0691. I have a 4" hose coming down from the ceiling from my cyclone. A 4" x 2.5" reducer is secured to the hose. I found a plastic cap at Home Depot which fit over the 2.5" section of the reducer. I drilled a hole in the cap so it friction fits onto the SS guard. Ths setup works well for me. I like that the guard is narrow and I don't have the weight of the hose bearing down on the guard.