Cabinet Blade Shroud Retrofit

[Patrick Kane]

I feel like ive read atleast a few threads proposing this retrofit on unisaws, 66's etc, but ive yet to see someone post photos of accomplishing it. I have a 72 thats in pieces right now, and im looking at the 4" port in the back of the cabinet with feet between it and the blade. Atleast the unisaw has a sloped interior, and with a 6" connection it does just fine without much residual dust inside or outside the cabinet. On the PM72, i dont want to chop up the cabinet too much, and im thinking back on a retrofited blade shroud that a lot of new saws use. There appears to be a lot of room inside the cabinet to work with, but i know a full bevel to 45° ruined others' plans to add a blade shroud on unisaws. Just not enough cabinet space to fit a 4" hose and shroud. My first thought was to see if i could buy a PM3000 shroud, but no one has the part in their catalog. Grizzly has the 1023 shroud for $7-8, but that is a 10" blade diameter. Not the end of the world, i would just need to mount it lower to make up for the smaller diameter. Finally, im thinking about skipping the shroud altogether and attaching a 4" flex hose to the sawdust deflector in front of the blade. My felder has a similar setup where only the front 1/5th of the blade is enshrouded with a 4" connection below it.

Im going to play around with things this weekend and ill report what fits and what doesnt, but i also dont want to reinvent the wheel if someone has a clever solution.

[William Hodge]

I have a Powermatic 72.
I'm more concerned about dust collection than the saw, so I cut a 6" hole in the right side of the saw for a 6" duct. That duct goes to 8", then 11" at he blower. This helped, but not enough. I use the saw to rip a lot of mahogany.

What really helped was a central vac 2 1/2" line to a crevice tool jammed in between feeder feeder wheels right over the blade.

I would address the off the top of the blade spray first, then go for the under the table dust.

[Tom Bender]

William
Can you share a picture of that?

[Patrick Kane]

Ok, so i mangled one 4" adapter before moving on to a second to something that fits and allows full range of motion. The first 'prototype' got crumpled when i beveled a full 45°. It is hard to believe, because the interior of the 72's cabinet looks so spacious, but the blade and arbor carriage get really close to the right side of the saw cabinet at full bevel. This is why my first attempt failed. The hose and adapter connected off the bottom of the chip deflector. This version connects perpendicular to the chip deflector and runs parallel to the whole trunnion assembly. It aint pretty, but it looks like it should work pretty well. I think a 3" hose would fit very nicely. As it stands, 4" rubs very SLIGHTLY on vertical travel. There is like 4" to 4" 1/8" clear side to side in that assembly. Finally, since it is tucked into the assembly, it bevels to 45° without getting crushed or interfering. Look forward to hooking it up and seeing how much dust escapes into the cabinet after a few weeks.