New Dust Collection

Last year I bought a shop vac and dust deputy from Home Depot.  I was pleased how they worked but did not like the amount of room it took up.  I came across a video on YouTube that had this design for it.  The link can be found here. This is not my design, but I did make some changes to the original design.  One thing was that I had a different vacuum.  When I went to shop for the parts, I found that the 2 ½” PVC coupling was not snug in the foot attachment holder.  I did not think this was going to be a big problem at the time.  As I was putting it together, the legs were too loose to pull around the shop to various tools.

The fix to this was to make a table out of 2 ½” PVC.  It is amazing how sturdy this is.  It is also difficult to remove pieces that were not cut to the correct dimension.  Overall, it came together in a few hours and works well. 

On the subject of using this as a vacuum, I find the system lacking.  I lose too much suction in the system to use effectively.  It does great pulling the sawdust from the machines because it is a closed system.  When I attach the floor attachment it does not seem to pull enough with the separator attachment.  Maybe I need a vacuum that pulls more CFM, but that is something I am not going to worry about.  I like how it works now.

Here is an update to the last paragraph.  Since I filled up a bucket, I swapped out to a new bucket.  The new bucket was purchased last year for the wood working class.  That bucket worked so much better.  Apparently a used beat up bucket does not work as well as a new one.