Miter Saw/ RAS dust collection, vac or cyclone

I have a nice older delta radial arm saw and no miter saw at this point. I have a pentz cyclone that I built a few years ago. When I was in my old shop I had a miter saw and had it hooked up to the cyclone. I rarely fired up the cyclone just to make a quick cut, it was loud, and I hated to start up the 5hp motor just for a quick cut. If I was cutting a bunch of parts I would turn it on, but usually there was just a huge pile of dust there. Now I am in my new shop and have the cyclone in my garage so its really quiet, I don't have a miter saw any more just a radial arm. The radial arm saw came with a dust hood thing that seems to work well at gathering the dust. Do most of you use your cyclone if you have one or a shop vac, possibly with a mini cyclone attached? I don't have a shop vac at this point but they are fairly cheap and it would also be nice to have one so I could vac the shop floor or use when free hand routing. Another possibility is to use my house central vac system and build a cyclone for it. The downside to that is I can't roll it around to use when routing unless I installed a lot of drops for hoses in the central vac line. Thoughts?

you will probably need to set up some type of shroud for your ras. If you try to hook your dc up to a small hose it wont be able to draw what it needs and you will starve it. (I found this out with my 1.5 hp 1100cfm dc) A shop vac helps with mine but still a lot gets by it. I have an old dewalt ras that I dusted off and have started using again in my shop.
I have it on wheels so I can move it where I need it. I remember seeing a set up someone made years ago that their dc came into a Y that had a 4 inch and a 1.5 inch outlet. The 4 inch ran to the shroud and the 1.5 ran to a flex hose that hooked into the blade guard. When I have some time I may fiddle around with that design and see if I can make it work....
those are the only 2 ways I know of.

Rich Soby said:

you will probably need to set up some type of shroud for your ras. If you try to hook your dc up to a small hose it wont be able to draw what it needs and you will starve it. (I found this out with my 1.5 hp 1100cfm dc) A shop vac helps with mine but still a lot gets by it. I have an old dewalt ras that I dusted off and have started using again in my shop.
I have it on wheels so I can move it where I need it. I remember seeing a set up someone made years ago that their dc came into a Y that had a 4 inch and a 1.5 inch outlet. The 4 inch ran to the shroud and the 1.5 ran to a flex hose that hooked into the blade guard. When I have some time I may fiddle around with that design and see if I can make it work....
those are the only 2 ways I know of.

Click to expand...

I have a shroud that is 2.5" for a shop vac. similar to this
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...17153&creative=399353&creativeASIN=B0000223WV

Mine is designed for a ras though. The outlet is placed right where the dust is shot. I tried it with a shopvac that I borrowed and it worked well. If I went the dc cyclone route I would make a shroud that has a 6" outlet and that would probably be better, as far as fine dust goes. My concern is I will probably end up not turning on the cyclone every time I make a cut. It just seems to hard on the cyclone motor to turn it on for a 3 second cut. If I used a shopvac I would probably turn it on every time I made a cut because those motors are made for that type of use. I guess what I am trying to decide is:
1. Is it better to have slightly worse collection with a shopvac that would get used every time or
2. better collection with the big cyclone that doesn't get used every time?

Just wondering what every body else does?

This is the box I had for my 12" RAS. I used it for straight cross cutting so I angled the opening. Put your DC pick up tube either on the bottom pointing up or at the bottom of the left side. My catch box hung over the back so I could hook my DC to the bottom & it worked better than my first one that was on the side.

Ahh gotcha! Usually if I am only making one or two cuts I don't always bother turning on the dc, I just shopvac up the dust. This also goes for my ts which I use 90 percent of the time.