Too much of a good thing could be a bad thing...

[mreza Salav]

well, I should say it can be dangerous.

I have a home-built over-the-blade guard that has a 3" dust collection. The good thing is that it can be used with a cross-cut sled I have built as I don't have to remove it to place the sled; just lift the guard up a bit and down after the sled is on the saw. The cross-cut sled has two T-tracks to use toggle clamps to hold the pieces; I always use it for cutting small pieces, as shown in the first photo below.
Recently I upgraded my DC to a clearvue cyclone. The 6" pipe comes to the TS where it branches to the cabinet and a 3" hose to the guard. The suction is so strong that a few times the off-cut pieces (like 1"x1") where sucked into the hose right after I finished the cut all the way to the bin.

Tonight I was cutting some acrylic 1/4" sheets (for a non-wood working project).
I had clamped the piece and the off-cut piece was about 2"x3". Once the cut was finished there was a loud bang and the piece was sucked up but couldn't go through and in the path was hit by the blade:

232311232310232312

The blade guard did its job in preventing the piece from shooting back but it certainly isn't a good set-up here. I could have clamped both sides but I didn't expect the suction to be strong enough to lift that 2x3 piece.

So this is a situation where too much suction could be bad. I have been thinking about how to address this; perhaps make the blade guard narrower so that there is not enough lift power to pick the pieces off the sled but I guess that is essentially limiting the CFM at the guard too.

Just wanted to share the story...

[Brian Kincaid]

Before you narrow the blade buard, try to put a blast gate on the overhead guard to limit the flow a little.
-Brian

[Glen Blanchard]

Do you have a blast gate on this? You may be able to regulate the vacuum power by opening it less than 100%.

[mreza Salav]

there is one 6" gate before the Y- at the table saw (so having that partially open will limit CFM at both the cabinet and guard).
The whole idea of reduced CFM at guard (and so less dust collection) isn't very appealing to me and I trying to find another way for this...

[Glen Blanchard]

Install a 2nd gate that only controls the vacuum to the blade guard. It would seem that if your vacuum is lifting these pieces off the sled or the table (mine does as well) you can afford to lose some suction there while not compromising dust extraction. Only use it at less than fully open when working with small pieces.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

It is a feature! Suck away all of the small pieces :-)

[Bob Wingard]

I had the exact same thing happen a year or so back ... also using a ClearVue (not that it is in any way their fault). In my instance, a 3/4" X 1" X 12" piece of plywood was cut from the end of a strip ... the suction caught it ... it moved into the rising teeth of the blade ... it momentarily got trapped between the moving teeth of the blade and the stationary guard, propelling it very violently.

It banged up two fingers and my thumb pretty badly. What I finally figured out was that the 4" hose connected to the guard was offset slightly to the left side of the blade, which pulled the piece into the rising teeth. Since my guard is mounted to the base from an old BRETT-GUARD unit, I make certain every time I turn the saw ON that the guard is offset to the right unless there is a special need to have it otherwise. I also took a small disk make of LEXAN ... drilled a bunch of 3/8" holes in it, and glued it to the intake port of the dust pickup ... act like a baffle so I don't have to fiddle with the blast gate all the time.

So far ... so good.

[Trent Shirley]

I was going to suggest using a widely spaced wire mesh within the guard or farther up the hose to prevent large items from going all the way through but Bob's reponse above does point out how too much suction can be a bad thing and perhaps you should work on restricting the flow. You only need to pick up dust as it comes off the teeth so it should not need nearly as much flow as it takes to lift a piece that large.
Another alternative would be to have a separator between your saw and your DC so larger stuff drops out before reaching the blades.

[Matt Day]

I think you should reinstall your old DC. I'll take that faulty cyclone so you no longer have to worry about it.

[Van Huskey]

Interested to see what you do short of reducing the flow from the guard when you will have small cutoffs.