help with dust collection on sliding table saw with tiger fence

[jeff piatt]

first off, thank you to everyone who takes the time to help us out with these things. your knowledge and experience is greatly appreciated.

we have a sliding table saw with an overarm collector on it and also one at the bottom. when the tiger fence is out of the way, it does an ok job. the problem is that when it is down it only allows the fence to come about 5 inches close to the saw, which isn't good enough. for smaller cutting it has to be raised up about 4 inches and when it is, the dust is really bad that collects on the saw.

we are running 2 1100cfm collectors attached to 4 in pipe running through our shop with stops at each machine. it seems there should be more than enough suction to make this not an issue but not so. from reading other posts, would you think we have restricted the air flow too much in an attempt to get more suction and that we need more volume? perhaps just disconnecting the top one and just using the bottom would make it better?

I am thinking that I need to build a new overarm collector that is slimmer and only covers the blade. does anyone have any pics of this being done?

I thought I had pics on my phone but alas, not so. I will post some later.

[johnny means]

Sounds like you have the blade tilt guard set-up in place. Most proffesional grade sliders I've seen have two options for the guard. One is a flat side, the other a big bubble. I've also noticed that many shops lose the flat cover and just end up with the bubble living on the guard forever. Might not be your issue, but worth looking into.

[David Kumm]

Small collectors are too low pressure to move much cfm through a 4" pipe. The impellers need to be a larger diameter or you need to increase pipe size. Dave

[Jim Becker]

If the fence is high/low like is on most sliders, the low position...if appropriate for the cut...would help alleviate the need to keep the guard up so high when the fence is close for a narrow cut. Honestly, I keep my fence in the low position 95% of the time.

[Rick Potter]

If I am seeing this properly, it sounds like a 'hula skirt' that FastCap sells might help. It comes in 4" lengths if I remember correctly.

It is bristles attached to a flexible membrane that can be attached to lots of things. Kinda like the brush around some computer operated router bits.