6" x 9" Belt Disc now Thickness sander

[mitzee]

Hi guys,

Thought I might share this as it came in pretty handy for me before I got my hands on a thicknesser. Pretty rough but it filled a need and it works.
It's just a standard Carbatec 6x9 belt/disc sander that I slung a board underneath with a pivot and height adjuster screw to allow me to thickness sand boards up to 150mm width and 32mm thickness. Could have increased the depth buy moving the motor capacitor but didn't have the need to. The shroud on the front allows attachment of dust collection (which works a treat) and also ensures fingers can not get anywhere near the belt. I used it exclusively for about a year to precisely thickness boards after rough cutting on the table saw (very handy for boards cut on the table saw which required cutting from both sides due to the limits of the saw depth). It can accommodate 1200mm long boards and will give a consistency of better than 0.1mm over that length. The motor isn't very powerful so fairly light passes are the go.

[BobL]

Good work! I love these small jigs - so useful.

Here are a few suggestions to help improve your dust collection.


1) A smaller pipe going into a bigger one scavenging the air around the machine at A
The basis of a great idea, but move A as close as possible to the source i.e. right next to E and just lose the small hose altogether.
Leave a gap around the connection to the machine to scavenge any dusty air.

2) Make D a Y connection

3) Remove the blast gates. Sanders make fine dust so MAX air flow is required. Blast gates (especially those) constrict flow and having two fully open ducts scavenging air in the vicinity of the sander is more likely to catch more fine dust. If you have other machines put a blast gate up near any connection further upstream

4) Flexy C will be severely throttled so maybe consider drilling some holes in F?

5) Of course B should be a 6" duct but that is another story?