My 17" Grizzly bandsaw makes a lot of dust, but I have no room for a proper dust collector. So, I bought a 1hp portable dust collector, the kind with just a bag attached, and had to remove the roller base, because I couldn't even fit it in the garage with the roller base. Anyway, it's listed at 500 CFM, and might do a fraction of that. So it's not a good dust collector. But I came up with an idea that makes the dust collector get almost all of the dust that falls below the table. And the best part is, it's cheap, easy, and quick to do.
What I did, was sealed off the lower cabinet. I used window rubber insulating strips and a rubber door sweep. I put the rubber window insulation around the cabinet doors, and the door sweep, cut into parts, around the bottom of the little triangle on the top dust collection port and around the blade gap, cutting out a groove for the blade to nest into so it won't touch the door sweep. Now, here's the kicker. I didn't insulate the bottom of the cabinet, nor the top around the top port triangle. But all other walls are sealed. That forces the lower port to replenish the air it sucks out from the gap at the bottom of the cabinet, and forces the top port to replenish it's air from above, where the lower guides are just below the table. This way, you're directing the air flow to where the dust actually builds up, and not wasting vacuum on areas where there is no dust. I've seen videos of people making enclosures under the table and running a third dust collector hose or shop vac there, and so far, this method seems to give pretty similar, and sometimes better, results than a lot of the videos show, depending on their actual method.
It does nothing for the dust above the table, of course. So there's still some cleanup to do. And a tiny amount of dust still builds up around the trunnion.
Now, I haven't tried every type of wood or situation. I'm not claiming it to be a perfect solution. But it works much better than I thought it would. So, I figured it would be worth passing on my findings so others could give it a try and see if it's a worthy modification for them as well.
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