Dust skirt

[norm]

I would like to build the SB dust skirt. Does anyone have a source and part number/price for the vinyl and brush door bottom sweep? Thanks for any information.

[billp]

Norman, Try Shopbot, they carried them a few months ago..I can sometimes find them at the local Home Depot, it's a Frost King white plastic "door bottom"-1-3/4"by 36", about 7-8 bicks I think..Bill P.

[norm]

Bill,

Home Depot had the door sweep. Thank you for the information. Norm

[David Fisk]

How long were the bristles on this sweep?

[billp]

The bristles are 1 inch Dave...Bill P.

[Jay Wiese]

Discovery: Instead of using the hard-to-find door sweep, I cut an old mouse pad into 1-1/2 inch strips and fastened it to my 1/2 inch thick lexan dust skirt plate with a large hose clamp. I then cut slits 3/8 inch apart to form the skirt. Works like a charm!

[ron_cleaver]

I just found the Frost King plastic door sweep with brush at Home Depot online.

[Mayo]

I've been using a piece of vinyl cove base, which I cut to about 1.5" and then put slits in the bottom half of it so that it would wrap around the piece of MDF I used in place of the 1/2" thick lexan. To attach it to the MDF I just used short drywall screws.

I cut the MDF sort of like an oval picture frame and recessed the top so that 1/8" acrylic would fit inside. I hot glued the acrylic in place. I cut the opening for the vac hose in the acrylic before I cut out the oval shape.

To attach this to the shop vac hose, I just put drywall screws through the side of the MDF and into the vac tube. Now the cool part...

To raise and lower the dust pick-up, I mounted the vac tubing onto a drawer slide (vertically of course) and then mounted the drawer slide to an angle bracket which is held to the Y carriage with a C-clamp, near the router. I use a hose clamp around both the drawer slide and the vac hose to maintain a working height for the dust pick-up.

This all sounds kind of Rube Goldberg-ish (remember some of those drawings of contraptions?) but it was cheap and it works.

[ssmith@skeeball.com]

I like the drawer slide idea! One could add a thumbscrew to lock the height adjustment.

I made my dust foot from 2 pieces of ¾” mdf pocketed ½” deep and bolted together. The top has 2 holes, 1 for the cullet and 1 for the vac tube. The bottom has 1 hole for the bit. I glued fuzzy sheepskin like material to the bottom for the skirt. I think shag carpet would work also. Since I was programming anyway I added a ring to my file to attach the foot to the vac tube. It works great except when I have small piece cut loose from my parts. Example: Center part of a 2” hole cut with a ½” bit.

The thing I wanted to add to the conversation is this:
I am considering adding a copper tube ring around my dust foot and hooking it to a limit input. I can make ground jumpers to clip onto my metal hold down clamps. My thought is that I wouldn’t have to be so worried about hitting a clamp when doing a one off small setup. I could move the clamp and resume the program rather than hovering over the “S” key while the program runs the first time.

Scott
P.S. If any one would like the sbp file drop me an e-mail

[donframbach]

I think I found a great on-line source for brush door sweeps:
http://www.reeseusa.com/category/Brush_Door_Sweep

Don Frambach

[ron_cleaver]

Don,

Those are all aluminum. I've tried that approach and it's difficult to bend the aluminum around the polycarbonate. I'm not satisfied with the results.

Ron

[gerald_d]

Those Reese brushes look very similar to those manufactured here. In our brushes, we can slide the brush out of the aluminium holder strip - then it can be bent more easily.

The alum. holders are shown here (http://www.aibrush.com/images/Strip_3.jpe). The actual strip brush (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=strip%2Bbrushes&btnG=Google%2BSearch) inside the alum. holder normally has a thin metal strip crimped over a wire (http://www.powerbrushes.com/metalbackings.htm) and this can be shaped (http://www.powerbrushes.com/specialforms.htm).

[donframbach]

Gerald, are you involved in brush manufacture?

Don

[gerald_d]

No, but I have had brushes manufactured to my specs for special applications.

[bjwat@comcast.net]

I'm about to redo the dust collector for the Colombo...the one from SB hits the legs of my table as the Y approaches 4" or less from the edge of the table. $135 wasted...

I had no trouble getting the Frost King sweep from Depot...But there is one of those ice scrapers/snow brushes with 2" stiff bristles staring at me...Might not be a bad idea. We'll see.

I like Mayo's idea of the drawer slide. I was thinking of using the 90° angle that attaches to the Y carriage and a slotted piece of steel that attached to the tube with stand-offs. A few of those plastic thumb-screws and it will be adjustable.

[rgbrown@itexas.net]

Brady,

If you learned something, the money was not wasted. I might agree it was not a cheap lesson. However, some of my software purchases were much more costly and didn't do a damn thing for my business.

At Wayne Locke's "CampBot Texas", he has some long brushes he got from McMaster-Carr. You might check them out.

[donframbach]

Wow! I ordered some 3" nylon brushes and holders from McMaster-Carr last night. To my surprise, they arrived today! For my purposes, they work great. (I searched under "strip brushes").

Don

[gerald_d]

mcmaster.com (http://www.mcmaster.com/) page number 1089 (Just type "1089" in the find box)

[Joe Crumley]

Gerald.

Would you please advise me which of the strip burshes you ordered?

Joe

[gerald_d]

None. It was Donald who ordered them.

[donframbach]

Hi Joe,

I bought the 3" nylon strip brush (3 feet 3/16") catalog number 74405T72. I also bought the strip brush holder cat # 8813T1.

I have built a different mount for my router which incorporates these brushes. For my purposes, I think this will work better than the ShopBot supplied dust unit.

Don

[gerald_d]

Donald, sometimes we cut the holders into short (say 1") lengths, each for only one or two screws. Then we bend the holders open and sort of "clip" them along a bent brush. They can be pinched closed with a pliers again.

We have also sunk the strip brush directly into a routed groove and siliconed (rtv) the brush in. There are many possibilities, but generally the alu. holders are more of a pain than a help for bent brushes.

[donframbach]

Gerald,

I made a diffferent kind of a dust skirt where I screwed 4 short lengths of aluminum brush holders to the bottom of my router mount each straight length forming a side of a rectangle The strip brushes slide easily into the holders. I plan to use different length brushes depending upon the bit length and cut depth. The brushes will also be very simple to replace (if necessary). I put the first version together two days ago (with 3" brushes) and it seems to work well.

Don

[logical@gmi.net]

I decided that since I was mainly doing cabinet doors and signs I wouldn't need to have my dust skirt move up and down with the router so I built a dust collector that is fixed to the y car by 90 degree aluminum angle iron. I made the hole big enough for the entire base of the PC router to go into so that I could use the exhaust to help move dust. I attached my delta dust collector's 4 inch pipe by going on the outside of the y car. You know, right over where the zero plate is located. I built a lexan box that is big enough for the 4 inch pipe to attach to the dust collector plate and bingo, it works great for my purposes.

I no longer have to open all of the doors and turn on all of the fans just to be in the same area as the bot. I can leave my air conditioner on and my dust mask off for a change. The dust collector makes cutting mdf doors very bearable now. I can post pictures if anybody cares to see my home grown dust collection skirt.

Wes

[pappy]

I would be delighted to see pictures of all of it!
Doug

[ron_cleaver]

Wes,

How does it work when you reach the edges of the table (i.e., assuming you cut 49" x 97" sheets of MDF)? That seems to be the problem with all dust collectors. I've been thinking of building a some removable pieces that would wrap the curcumference of the table to make the dust collector work better.

[logical@gmi.net]

Ron,

It works great on full sized MDF sheets. It did hit the table legs the first go around and racked the y car. The aluminum supports for the dust skirt are screwed to the y car with sheet metal screws and are braced off of the y car also. It was a tad flimsy until I added the extra aluminum bracing.

Anyway, the top of the dust collector is not much bigger than the Shopbot version so I am able to cut a full sized sheet of MDF. I keep forgetting to take pictures of it. I will tonight and will post a link to them.

Wes

[logical@gmi.net]

Here is a link to a picture of my dust skirt. It works a lot better than all of the other designs that I have tried, but as you can see, there is plenty of MDF dust on the bot.

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid71/p4bda7b8355d5082c9880d1f9717c1d67/fb96505b.jpg

I also made a dust free box out of some mistake cabinet doors for my computer and controller box. I read a few horror stories about the heat and the dust causing errors and worse. I used a 13.00 bathroom exhaust fan to move the air, 50 cfm, and a 12x12 filter. It's positive pressure so it blows the door open by about 1/8th inch when on.

Works great so far.

[Mayo]

Nice heavy duty looking dust skirt!

I notice that the brackets which hold your roller bearings/guides that ride flat rather than the ones that ride vertical along the Y carriage are shaped with two bends in each of them - mine are just flat, basically square plates.

Is this a new bracket that shopbot is including with the bots now? It would seem to make adjusting those guides a heck of a lot easier and quicker.

[kerrazy]

Yeah Mayo,
They started using those last year and they work great. They have an offset cam so you can keep them nice and snug to the track.
Dale

[gerald_d]

Mayo & Dale, we havn't fitted the guide rollers on our SB because there isn't a proper edge for them to roll along. They were fighting a battle with the other rollers (on top) that sat on proper ground rail edges and the carriage would not run straight and true.

[kerrazy]

Ah yes, you hve square stock on the older machines. The newer ones have angle iron with a defined edge to follow along
Dale

[gerald_d]

Dale, we do have a PRT with angle iron rails - but only one edge was ground for the upper v-rollers. The other edge was left raw and our guide rollers weren't happy to run on that edge.

[sheldon@dingwallguitars.com]

Gerald,

What is keeping your Y-car on - gravity?

[Mayo]

I have only the upper edge of the angle iron ground also.
My guide rollers may not be happy either but I insisted they do their job. The paint on that edge is starting to wear off now.

Without the other rollers contacting the other edge, I would think the entire Y car could get lifted off track in certain circumstances.

Looking at the way the guide rollers sit on the ground edge, they don't match the profile of the edge either. It's amazing the thing works, but it does. I guess the angle edge profile could have been ground to more of an inverted V shape to make it match the groove of the rollers.

Someone slacking in the grinding dept.???

[gerald_d]

Sheldon, gravity plus spring tension of the drive motor on the one side (The side on which the router is mounted).

We do get that the car gets knocked off the rails when we do something really stupid. But it is a good "safety valve" because we don't lose steps or damage anything else.


If we find that it becomes a problem, we will mount a spring-loaded roller on the opposite side to the motor, to mimic the hold-down of the motor. It will just be a ball bearing running under the angle iron (where the rack is on the motor side}.

[vcabinet]

does anybody have ideas or pictures for a dost skirt for a columbo and portercable running seperatly, need two hoses and two seperate units to move up and down, Please give some help

[mrdovey]

Gary...

Take a look at http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/dust_collection.html for the approach I took. It should work equally well for what you're wanting to do.

[vcabinet]

With the help of the forum I was able to build a great dust skirt for a columbo and makita together. It works great, if anybody wants pictures or help let me know.

[mrdovey]

Gary...

Yes. Please post.

...Morris

[vcabinet]

Here are some pics. of my dust skirt, If you have any questions please give me an email.