2 4" Ports or 1 6" Port for Miter Saw Dust Collection

[Josh Baldwin]

Hey guys so I'm close to finishing my Clearvue build and have routed the spiral ductwork to all of my tools. I'm going to build a miter saw box with sliding doors to keep it tight. I'm wondering if I should do a 4" inlet on each side of the miter saw or just stick with one 6" inlet and where that should go. Any opinions would be great!

[Rush Paul]

Josh, this design from Nicemac as outlined in the Festool Users Group is the design I plan to follow when setting up our Festool Kapex miter station with a Clear Vue CVMAX system. I will run the full 6" duct to the downdraft box and a 4" takeoff above that to connect to the dust port of the miter saw as Nicemac reports he did in his phase 2 design. Note that Nicemac is also using a Clear Vue CV1800.

https://www.festoolownersgroup.com/m...-installation/

If you follow your current design of using a hood over the saw with sliding doors, I'd consider using a single 6" port from below at the back side of the saw as Jay Bates did in his design. But the other thing I'd do is use a radiused inlet for the duct (a bell mouth hood) to smooth out the air intake into the duct rather than having the duct connect flush to a 90-degree surface or, even worse, stick bare into the cabinet.

[Andrew Seemann]

I've got an open enclosure around mine with a 6" inlet above. It isn't airtight nor is it intended to be. Most of the dust gets pulled up the duct. Some of the larger chips land on the bottom of the enclosure; I just vacuum those out every once in a while. Almost none of the small fine dust (the bad stuff) lands outside the enclosure. There is a pretty good pull of air going into it. Putting the duct on the top may or may not be ideal; it was the only place I could mount it for clearance reasons. Using 6" duct might be overkill, but the extra airflow makes up for a lot of less than ideal engineering.

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[Josh Baldwin]

Yea that's pretty serious. I'll have to think about that and see if that works for my setup. Thanks for the info!

[Josh Baldwin]

I've got an open enclosure around mine with a 6" inlet above. It isn't airtight nor is it intended to be. Most of the dust gets pulled up the duct. Some of the larger chips land on the bottom of the enclosure; I just vacuum those out every once in a while. Almost none of the small fine dust (the bad stuff) lands outside the enclosure. There is a pretty good pull of air going into it. Putting the duct on the top may or may not be ideal; it was the only place I could mount it for clearance reasons. Using 6" duct might be overkill, but the extra airflow makes up for a lot of less than ideal engineering.

E05CDA5C-1C71-4E0D-8A33-895840F6D3C5.jpg

Ok yea that's what I was thinking about doing but with some sliding doors to keep it tighter. It's good to know even without the doors that it works well. Thanks for the pic!

[Rush Paul]

As you design your cabinet, keep in mind that it is the air flow across the dust stream that pulls out the dust. If you keep everything too tight, and there's no cross air flow, you don't get effective dust extraction. You just want to keep the dust stream corralled as much as possible by using the panels and sliding doors, not limit the air flow.

[Thomas Crawford]

For what its worth mine works better with the front wide open. I have a single 4" line. Reducing the length of the 4" flex hose from 10' to 5' made a huge difference. I have a 5" hose and connector that I'll get around to putting on there eventually, although its still sitting in the corner because I'm pretty satisfied with the current setup.

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[Thomas Crawford]

Also the best you are going to do is get about 90-95% of the dust. You can see in my first pic it settles a little bit in the front. But what you see there is from a lot of cuts, it is so much better than a shop vac connected to the back. I no longer have fine dust sprayed around the shop.