Makita SCMS Dust Collection

[Matt Meiser]

A month or so ago I traded my belt/disc sander for a Makita LS1214FL SCMS. Pretty sweet saw but I need to get dust collection figured out. On my previous 12" CMS, I was working on building a hood from a plastic tote to sit on a stand behind the saw which is mounted on an MSUV stand. The Makita shoots the dust out right over the top of the hood. After looking today, its going to be tough to come up with a hood big enough. On a whim I hooked my vac up to the port and it seems pretty respectable. There were chips that escaped, but the dust seemed fairly well collected. I'm wondering if a better approach might not be a vac with some kind of pan underneath to catch a lot of the rest of the chips?

[Vijay Kumar]

Matt I have the very same saw and I too will be watching the answers since i dont have one.

Vijay

[Josh Reet]

Have you guys seen this:

http://www.fastcap.com/sawhood.aspx

[Matt Meiser]

Yes, and the downdrafter (http://www.amazon.com/Rousseau-4550-Down-Drafter/dp/B0006FRAVQ)too, which seems to no longer be available anyway. The Fastcap hood certainly looks big enough, but no provisions for dust collection. Its my observation that these saws throw a pretty good cloud of barely visible dust and without dust collection a vac that dust floats right into my face. At least with my previous saw, that worked best when the DC intake was right at the back of the saw to have enough air movement to capture that dust. So I'm really under the impression that its more of a chip collection solution.

The Downdrafter is what I was trying to imitate before but for the SCMS it needs to be really wide and the Makita shoots the dust up pretty high so it has to be really tall.

[Prashun Patel]

Have you tried one of those Big Gulp DC mouths from PSI or Rockler?

Personally, my CMS is used seldom enough that the 2" shopvac hose does a respectable enough job. My CMS bench is backed to a concrete wall, which does a good job of directing most overspray to the floor, where it gets vaccumed up manually (read, once in a blue moon).

[Robert Reece]

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=119650

[Matt Meiser]

Sean, I looked at one of those but they aren't all that big. But something like that under the saw, with the vac hooked to the port on the saw is kind of what I was thinking. I'd just make my own so that it would be flatter.

I plan to clean up the area around my saw and do some testing today to see how much the vac isn't getting and where its going. Right now there's a big pile on the ground and stuff stuck to the wall behind so I can't tell anything right now.

[Cliff Holmes]

I built a somewhat complicated hood that's working perfectly. It'll suck fine dust from several feet away, so until I finish ducting the DC to the bandsaw I just wheel it over next to the SCMS. I had planned to add doors for more dust control but I've found it to be completely unnecessary.

You can see the some construction details in this previous post: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showpost.php?p=1224287&postcount=3