Dust skirt design

[Phil O'Rourke]

I'm looking for a dust skirt design that I can easily build at home. They look fairly simple but I'm sure there are some creative designs out there.

[Roger Kirkpatrick]

I'm looking for some good ideas also. I have 2 Z's I would like to pipe into 1- 4" duct.

Has anyone gone to the trouble to design a dust skirt that would lower with the router and raise with it but stop raising (to leave room under it for material change) to change bits. It would stop raising to give room to change the bit. Mounted on some sort of slides with adjustable stops in both directions with springs or something.

[Mike John]

I just searched for 'dust skirt' and found 59 threads.
I can not point you to any particular one, as many seem to cover the topic you area asking about.
If you search, I think you will find what you are loking for.
If not, come back and ask for more details.
Also try www.mechmate.com and go to the Forum.
Lots of good Shopbot modification stuff there.

.............Mike

[Roger Kirkpatrick]

Gerald, I had one similar to this when I had 1 Z.
Seemed to work O.K. The brushes are the trick.
But with a second Z I don't have enough room for the hose to run down next to a router.
So I planned on splitting the hose, running it outside the car and pull dust from each end, behind the routers.
I guess I will make a double holed skirt with 2 dust ports that lead outside, around the car.( if you get the picture) So I don't think I will have much room to change bits with the skirt down.
I hope to rig up something that will retract from the bits as the routers raise, so I can get to the bits. But maybe, as I am writing this, I could have a removable side instead of a removable end, like yours. I will have to get to the side anyway to change the bit. The hoses will be in the way on both ends.
Now for the trick, where do I get those brushes?

[Gerald_D]

...down the road from USABCO in my case, but my road is 8000 miles from yours.

Here is an old thread for you:
http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/messages/27/1101.html

[Jeff Hamilton]

Does anyone have a dust skirt for the drill unit. Looks like Shopbot would have designed one for this as well.

[Phil O'Rourke]

I made a dust skirt using a stock shop-vac angled nozzle. My thinking is that the angled nozzle will aim the suction toward the source and collect chips more efficiently. It works well. The skirt is plastic recycled from a gallon milk jug. I'd like something a little thicker.

[Mike Healy]

Phil,
Very interesting design. I am assuming this fits around a router and not a spindle? Does Shopbot supply a dust skirt?

[Phil O'Rourke]

The design is for a router. Shopbot does have a dust skirt available.

[David Hunt.]

Yes, SB does have a very nice CLEAR dust skirt available:
my friend just received one with his new PRT-96.
This SB-supplied dust skirt also included about 2.5 ft. of 4 in. clear flexi-hose,
the first bit of it squished to an oval-kinda cross section for the first 1 ft. or so,
then it's regular circular hose.

And at the connecting end(to your vac.system) there's a handy alligator clip stuck on to the last exposed 6 ins. of the metal 'cord' built into this clear spiral tubing,
this functioning as a static electricity discharge feature!
All in all, a very nice device, this much improved SB-made dust skirt!

I checked SB webpages to see if it's available separately,
but the only mention of it is that it comes supplied with a PRT machine, when you buy a machine.
SB could be selling these things like hot cakes as a cool after market accessory, to each and every present SB owner, but what is the cost??