Penn State TS Dust Collector?

[Art Davis]

I have just bought and installed a Penn State table saw dust collector. Problem is, I don't think it reduces the sawdust in the air at all! Does anyone have any ideas? Any experience with this unit? I will post photos tomorrow. I am using an HF dust collector and twenty foot 4 inch flex hose.
Thanks.
Art

[glenn bradley]

I assume you're using the DC for above and below the table collection. I gate both my runs as close to the DC as I can to avoid the loss of flow caused by flex hose. I gate my 'below the table' hose till I see the little plastic paddle on the PSI blade hood get sucked in a little. This tells me I've got adequate suction at the 'above table' position. If I leave the 'below table' hose wide open there is not enough suck at the top of the table. I also use no more flex hose than I absoloutly have to. My DC is a 1HP Delta and does fine when adjusted this way. Flex hose is cheap enough that I don't worry about cutting it to custom length. I do the same thing when using the DC for above and below collection on the RT. Hope this helps.

[Kent Fitzgerald]

Art, are you referring to the "Overarm Dust Guard" (item #TSGUARD)?

[Art Davis]

Kent,

Yes, that's the one!

Glenn,

I don't have collection on the bottom of my Delta contractor's saw yet. Just installed the top collection and wanted to try out the blade guard and collector on the top. But there's still stuff shooting out the front of the guard. (Where the little flap is.) I do have twenty feet of flex hose still, though, as I haven't yet run the pvc. Maybe the suction is suffering, as you say, because of all that flex line. By the way, how do you route your hose to the bottom of your saw without interfering with workpiece handling?

Thanks.

Art

[glenn bradley]

Art,

That would be my thoughts. If your DC is mobile I would try a shorter length of hose. My flex piece is about 6 feet long and does compress (if that's the right term) when the DC is fired up. I did have a bit of a time finding the right balance for the guard to make it heavy enough to stay down on the material as it passed under but not so heavy as to be difficult to get the hood to ride up over the piece as it made contact.

My final solution was to add a bolt to the T-track that sets on top of the hood and add washers till I got the balance I was after. I do need to keep the counter weight slid all the way into the adjustment tube to keep the hood from "floating" above the material, hence the addition of the bolt and washers for weight.

If I am using my WWII combo blade I will still get some small wood-chip escapees as the chips get thrown pretty hard. Ripping with a good rip blade or cross cutting with a good cross cut blade does not cause this. Even in a worst case I get very little debris escaping the air flow.

Again, this is with a 1HP DC split between above and below the table. I also have a trashcan separator which puts a pretty good hit on my airflow. With your direct connection to the top only I would expect better performance so my guess is the extra hose length.

For what its worth,

Glenn

P.s. PSI did send you the red metal plate that you have to attach to the rear of the clear plastic hood to close off the rear, right?

[Art Davis]

Glenn,

I appreciate your discussion of the system. It'll help as I'm tuning mine up. Yep, I did get the little red plate----and it's in place.

When I asked about handling of the work piece, I was interested in how you routed your tubing down to the bottom of your saw so that the tubing doesn't interfere with the workpiece sliding through. Seems to me that to go from above the table to below it, you gotta' pass through the plane of the table top somewhere, and I'm wondering just where you did it. Seems to me that no matter what, you're bound to interfere with a piece of some lenght on one side or the other.

Thanks.

Art

[Aaron Beaver]

Art, will you let me know how you like that Blade Guard when you get it working a little better, PM would be fine if you like. I have been looking at overarm guards mostly for dust collection but hadn't seen the one you have from Penn State.

Thanks

[glenn bradley]

Sorry, I missed that part I was in such a hurry to answer the other part . . . duh. You are correct that to use their mast you will interfere with the length you can cut to one side or the other. The only solution to this if you must cut very large pieces is to mount the guard from above. Although a method is provided in the manual, I don't care for it. I have yet to come up with a simple method of doing this that will allow me to be able to swing the guard out of the way. I do this frequently enough that I don't want to give up the ease of the side mounted mast (yet).

This is a pic of my old setup but it does show the mast, the side mount and hose runs. I mounted to the end of my extension table at a distance that was a couple inches farther out than my widest fence setting (30" in my case). Any longer cross cuts or wider panels are done by hanging the larger portion off the left side and sawing off the spoil as opposed to the "keeper".

I once bemoaned the 30" limit but have since adopted the use of a 'straight edge / circular saw' or 'straight edge / router' method of breaking down larger pieces. I'm just a home-shop guy and I find it safer and for a runt like me handling the material after it is broken down into smaller pieces is just easier.

[Kent Fitzgerald]

Art,

I have the TSGUARD and I'm happy with its performance, but in my experience, you need collection both above and below the blade, and you need a lot of airflow. I originally tried my Delta 1 HP collector, but it just didn't have enough suck with the airflow divided between two ports.

The pix below show a transitional experiment. You might be able to tell that the port under the saw goes to the Delta DC, and the overarm guard goes to a shop vac (barely visible in the bottom right). Still not enough suck.
http://www.users.fast.net/~kkfitzge/psiguard.html

I'm now using a 2 HP collector with a 12" impeller and 5" metal ductwork, which splits into two 4" ducts for above and below the blade.