Harvey Pascoe
01-22-2011, 5:55 AM
This is to alert you to the problems associated with router table dust buckets, and the solution.
Anyone who buries their router bit in the work piece knows that above table dust collection is worthless. I routinely route 1.5” wide troughs to make shallow trays and the amount of dust this throws on me and into the shop is horrendous. Recently I saw offered in catalogs something called a “dust bucket” a steel enclosure that fits around the router under the table to which a dust port is attached. This looked like it would be effective so I built one of my own, 12” square and sitting on the shelf within the cabinet and sealed to the underside of table top with weather stripping. It proved to be 95% effective at capturing dust. Wow, I was amazed, but not for long.
Just one small problem: within three weeks I burned up two brand new Porter-Cable routers. After the second motor burned up, I took it apart to see what went wrong. Holy smoke! The motor was totally impacted with dust, which also had caught fire. The reason for this was obvious as all routers have a fan at the collet end that pulls air up through the motor toward the bit. The dust bucket simply accelerated the flow of dust through the motor. Equally obvious was the solution which was to provide and outside source of clean air for the motor.
Making a sketch and analyzing air flows led to the idea of drilling a hole in the bottom of the dust bucket and attaching a vinyl accordian dryer duct to the router top with a hose clamp. I drilled a 3.5” hole in the bottom of the dust bucket, so the hose would fit tight, and then routed it to the outside of the router table cabinet. I used 18” of bellows hose so that I could still lift the router up and out of the table with ease. I also reduced the 4” dryer duct to a 1.25” intake with plastic plumbing parts. The total cost for this modification ran about $20, it took me about 6 hours to complete and it is 100% effective in keeping dust out of the router. Dust capture has been reduced from 95% to around 85% but a far cry from zero percent as previously.
The only mistake I made was placing the dust port at the top of the box near the router collet. The dust port should be at the bottom of the box.
If your router table is a cabinet, beware that it is shortening your router life by putting too much dust in the motor. You can avoid this by blowing out the router with an air hose just a couple times a year.
Anyone who buries their router bit in the work piece knows that above table dust collection is worthless. I routinely route 1.5” wide troughs to make shallow trays and the amount of dust this throws on me and into the shop is horrendous. Recently I saw offered in catalogs something called a “dust bucket” a steel enclosure that fits around the router under the table to which a dust port is attached. This looked like it would be effective so I built one of my own, 12” square and sitting on the shelf within the cabinet and sealed to the underside of table top with weather stripping. It proved to be 95% effective at capturing dust. Wow, I was amazed, but not for long.
Just one small problem: within three weeks I burned up two brand new Porter-Cable routers. After the second motor burned up, I took it apart to see what went wrong. Holy smoke! The motor was totally impacted with dust, which also had caught fire. The reason for this was obvious as all routers have a fan at the collet end that pulls air up through the motor toward the bit. The dust bucket simply accelerated the flow of dust through the motor. Equally obvious was the solution which was to provide and outside source of clean air for the motor.
Making a sketch and analyzing air flows led to the idea of drilling a hole in the bottom of the dust bucket and attaching a vinyl accordian dryer duct to the router top with a hose clamp. I drilled a 3.5” hole in the bottom of the dust bucket, so the hose would fit tight, and then routed it to the outside of the router table cabinet. I used 18” of bellows hose so that I could still lift the router up and out of the table with ease. I also reduced the 4” dryer duct to a 1.25” intake with plastic plumbing parts. The total cost for this modification ran about $20, it took me about 6 hours to complete and it is 100% effective in keeping dust out of the router. Dust capture has been reduced from 95% to around 85% but a far cry from zero percent as previously.
The only mistake I made was placing the dust port at the top of the box near the router collet. The dust port should be at the bottom of the box.
If your router table is a cabinet, beware that it is shortening your router life by putting too much dust in the motor. You can avoid this by blowing out the router with an air hose just a couple times a year.