Monday, July 13, 2020

dust collection and things

A while back Liz and I were trying to solve our dust collection problem. Liz sands a lot with her flex-shaft and I often grind things at the bench. We both end up wearing dust-masks/respirators (often for hours). With the current shortage we have been trying to solve it with "at the bench" dust collection systems. A while back I bought an under bench system off of ebay to use with the Jooltool (more on that later).  It more or less looks like this:

It actually works like a dream when I remember to use it (the rheostat switch it a little awkward). I bought it for two reasons: one, it was cheap and two because it collects the dust in a bag and we can refine it (the bags are all paper with one little rubber part that you can rip off before you throw everything in your refining barrel). This one was $100 but they sell some with foot pedal switches (I should have bought one of those). The one serious design flaw is that the hose is way too short for it to be practical. The good news is that is it the same size as a small ShopVac hose ($33 with couplers from Lowes). The other problem is that I needed a mount for my bench to hold the hose down and add more "in-take cone-age" to direct the dust.

Off to Rhino and the Cetus MKIII extended FDM printer. I also need to make another bracket to hold down the hose on the back of the bench.  

Cetus MKIII extended

New studio setup with printer and mini split

Measurements laid out in the software. 

Version one