Zero-Clearance Inserts & Dust Collection

[Marty Tippin]

It seems to me that I might be able to improve dust pickup on my table saw by drilling some additional "vent" holes in my zero-clearance insert, the idea being to provide more airflow and "negative pressure" around the blade, thus catching more of the dust, especially the fine stuff.

Anyone tried that? Does it help? Any reason *not* to try it?

[Steve Wurster]

I tried that, but I'm not sure it worked for me. Of course I have a contractor-style saw with an open-to-the-air cabinet that I have (poorly) closed off, so my case probably isn't the best. Note however that for a lot of cuts the piece or the fence will be over those holes, thus limiting their purpose.

I installed the SawStop dust-collecting blade guard (on a non-SawStop saw) and that works much better. For most rip cuts I get almost nothing on the table. For cross cuts or sliver-style rip cuts, the guard is too open for it do do its dust collecting magic.

[Bruce Page]

I drilled out the throat plate on my bandsaw and one of my router table plates thinking it would help. It didn't make any noticeable difference.

[Cary Falk]

When you are cutting a board, won't most of the holes be covered up?

[Bill Space]

Thinking about your question, during the time you're making your cut wouldn't the holes be closed off by the wood you were cutting? In most cases anyway…

Seems to me that they would be covered, so holes would have no effect during the time sawdust was being produced, except during the initial part of the cut and at the very end possibly…

After thinking about it I don't think I will drill and any extra holes in my ZCI.

Bill

[Steve Peterson]

When you are cutting a board, won't most of the holes be covered up?

You might catch a small percentage of the dust if you are ripping a small sliver and one side of holes is open. Tablesaws have way too many other openings, that there won't be a lot of air movement through any holes at the top.

A top mounted cover like a shark-guard will be a lot better at directing the dust into your dust collector.

The only time I have been successful in getting wood pulled into the saw is when I am cutting tenons. I put the dado plate in to let the cutoff pieces fall into the saw. This is much better than having 1" by 1" by 1/8" projectiles. Gravity does most of the job of getting them out of the way..

Steve

[glenn bradley]

I tried adding a bit wider slot at the rear for my previous saw per a tip in one of the magazines. It does leave less random spoil up top although I never really questioned why.

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My Saw Stop inserts and some aftermarket versions are already that way:

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[Jim Dwight]

I did some tests one time on my Ryobi BT3100. I made up a bunch of zero clearance plates and did cuts with the top of the saw clean and then took a picture so I could go back and compare the results. Nothing I did made a huge difference. I tried holes but quickly decided a slot wider on the back worked best. That makes sense if you think of the blade pushing dust down into the cabinet but then some of it wants to come back with the blade to the top surface of the cabinet. I have the enclosure of the saw pretty well sealed so air is pulled into the cabinet. The wider slot on the back side of the blade doesn't affect the zero clearance function at all and does help get dust to the DC. But not a whole lot. If you don't want dust on the top, you need a blade guard pickup. Mostly I just live with a little dust on top and vacuum it up occasionally.

[Jim Becker]

Drilling in your insert isn't likely going to do very much...there are a lot of places that air already enters the saw cabinet...such as right under the table at the cabinet edges. The only thing I ever did when I had a conventional cabinet saw was use a piece of magnetic material to close off most of the slot where the arbor tilt wheel rides. I used magnetic so that it was easy to move should I have had to tilt the blade.

[Marty Tippin]

You might catch a small percentage of the dust if you are ripping a small sliver and one side of holes is open.

That's kind of the scenario I was thinking of. With my current setup (6" port and 6" pipe all the way to the 3HP cyclone), I get almost zero dust on the table when doing a "typical" cut. But when trimming an edge, it still goes everywhere. It looks like, on a wider cutoff, that the dust is directed down into the machine but tends to "spray" when there's nothing on the left of the blade to direct it down.

I may put a few holes at the front of the ZCI and see what happens.

I do agree that a shark guard would probably do a better job and I may look into that at some point.