DC for a Sliding Miter Saw - 1HP DC or ShopVac?

[Dan Ness]

I have decided not to tie in my Dewalt sliding saw to my regular DC and instead go with either a 1HP wall mounted DC, or a high quality shopvac like a FEIN or maybe even a Festool. Either one of these would be dedicated to the saw, and would need to be able to pull dust through the Dewalt's tiny 1.5" dust port, along with a large 4" port at the back of the dust shroud I am building for the saw.

From everything I have read, it seems like the shopvac would be better for the 1.5" port, and a DC would be better at the 4" port, but if I had to go with just one machine which one would be best?

[Jim Andrew]

I have a shopvac on my Makita SCMS, it had a bag which I replaced with the shop vac. Mine is not an expensive shop vac, just a shop vac. Has the pleated paper filter, helps some, does not get all the sawdust, as the collector funnel area is not big enough. They were not really designed for dust collection, but it works reasonably well. I also use my Makita belt sander with a vac, and it gets most of the dust, just hook the vac where the bag used to connect. Hope the power tool companies think about those of us using power tools in the shop, and make dust ports available on their tools. Or as add ons. I try to use vacs on every tool I can.

[Greg R Bradley]

The only SCMS that have decent dust collection thru the vac port are the Kapex and the Makita 7.5". The Milwaukee saws are the next step down. The rest of the Sliders are about 5 step below that.

If you have to chose ONE, I would make a collector and hook your regular DC up to it. A vacuum added to the port will also help but a regular shop vac will work just as well as a Fein or Festool. Save those for other tools.

The vac hooked up to the port seems to help mainly with dust thrown forward.

In one shop we had a Dewalt 10" CMS hooked up to a vacuum. It also had a hood hooked up to a big DC. It worked pretty well until the Dewalt CMS was replaced with a Dewalt SCMS.

My Makita LS1214 SCMS was so bad at throwing dust, i sold it. I'm using a Bosch 10" CMS that no longer exists in the US although the dust port is similarly configured to the Dewalt 10" CMS.