Hey Pony,
someone recently told me that he had sprayed trucks for a german truck manufacturer for decades. Since it often had to be done quickly, e.g. because of accidents where only one door had to be sprayed, but on the same day, they never actually wore masks. That ruined his health.
When I think of the protection I wear just for one little spray job, this is hard to believe regarding the fact that they were professionals.
Hey Wout,
the powerful your dust extraction and collection system is, the more you will have negative pressure inside the door (and need an opening for the air to enter)
What about your vacuum table? What type of vacuum pump do you plan to use, and what kind of seal on the workarea?
There was this discussion the other day. Depending on the type of vacuum table and workpiece sealing, you would use a very different vacuum pump.
Grating tables work reliably with a vacuum pump with much less rated air flow, even on larger areas, than Hole grid tables, which “waste” more air, but allow to do things like this. Depending on the type of vacuum table and workpiece sealing, you would need a Rotary Vane Pump vs. a Side Channel Blower.
You’ll also have to consider that a vacuum table that has no perfect sealing on the workpiece will want to draw wood dust that is not catched by the dust collection system.
I am going to be building a grating table and using MDF on top of it to distribute the vacuum. I saw that in another video on the forum and quite liked the idea. The t-tracks are for situations where you don’t want/can’t to use the vacuum table or you just want to really clamp in your workpiece
I need to make some adjustments but this is the general ideas for the grating table and waste board.
@Aiph5u
I unfortunately don’t really have a dust extraction system at all. I tried the onefinity dustboot but I’m cutting completely through 3/4 inch panels and the dustboot didn’t really work that well for me. I also broke it a few days later when I was lowering the z-axis. I am probably going to also invest in a 3d printer just so I can make my own dustboots once I need them. For now however since I don’t have the enclosure I don’t work in the same room as the machine just because of the noise and I don’t mind cleaning the ball screws out once in a while to make up for that.
Hey Wout,
nothing compares to drawing the wood dust as close as possible where it is created, i.e. directly at the milling bit. Nothing is as effective.
For this, of course selecting a good dust boot is crucial. The stock dust boot is not that satisfying.
But the choice of the dust extraction and collection system matters of course very much too.
Update:
I finished the torsion table and am just finishing up the boards for my vacuum.
The idea for interlocking beams I had turned out not to work that great for a few reasons:
@WaywardWoodworker was right when he said that an extremely precise fit would be need. I ended up making some mistakes when cutting the boards to length, I probably also had the machine skip a few times and the lumber I got was not all planed to the exact same dimensions. It still makes for a fairly stable torsion box but didn’t fit as well together as I hoped. It will work but the pieces aren’t all as full as I would have hoped.
The notches also had another weakness that I hadn’t thought of which was the grain of the wood. A few peices broke off the board so I just screwed them back on.
It just takes too long, I think I had the machine going for about 4 days which by itself was fine but having to continually switch out pieces was quite a pain.
I haven’t updated the design yet as I’m focusing on the enclosure now. However if someone wants to build one of these torsion tables themselves I’ll get it updated sooner rather than later.
The enclosure will pretty much be the same except now will just be a single layer of plywood.
Here’s what I have for now though I’ll need to fine tune it. The back will just be on a hinge to drop down since the table will be backed against a wall to save space and I don’t plan on getting into the back that regularly anyways. I think I will need to make a few more adjustments to get the proper cutting area location, accomodate for the dustboot overhang and figure out where the dust vacuum and wiring will fit in.
Again let me know if you think there’s any improvements I could make. I’m very grateful with all the advice I’ve recieved so far.
