Something different? Ducting a SHOP VAC – one happy chappy

**FenceFurniture** · 24th August 2012, 09:53 PM

For a year or so I’ve been using an Aldi Shop Vac wth my various tools, and even though it’s very noisy, a PITA to empty, and gets frequently blocked filter, it changed my life. I had that for general use, and a dedicated small house vac for the drill press. The latter actually worked very well but it’s capacity was tiny, as I discovered when drilling a series of quite large Forstner holes.

I did not like:

The noise
The too rapidly clogging filter leading to no suction far too quickly
The knowledge that this vac was spewing back out a lot of unseen dust at me
Tripping over the hose
The dust accumulation on the hose from being dragged around the floor constantly
Having to change the hose from one tool to another and then back again for every task (and often very inconveniently so)
Having to unplug and re-plug the power lead for each tool (to get tool-triggering), every time I used it
Other things I can’t remember!

The addition of remote control power sockets from Aldis was a major advance. It meant that I could operate the vac from wherever I was, and working on whatever machine. Thus I eliminated having to change the power lead on the tool, and I was able to shorten the overly long after-tool running of the vac, or indeed run the vac as long as I want after-tool to clean up the deck.

Recently I took delivery of an “M” class shop vac with an auto filter cleaning operation. It has a “whacker” that goes off at the end of tool triggering, and this can also be intermittent during tool operation between every 15 secs (for Gyprock sanding) and 5 minutes (for carpet vacuuming), so it covers all bases for cleaning frequency required. A great benefit is that this is a seriously quiet vac, with a much more human-friendly tone. I chose “M” class because I use MDF reasonably often (if only for jig making).

A few nights ago I drew up what I would need to duct up to the Drill Deck at one end of the 3.6 metre bench, and also cover the SCMS end (which is where the vac is stored underneath). Yesterday I bought the plumbing parts, and I used about $70 worth of them for what I will show below.

This is the end with the Saw, and the vac is directly under here. The pipe at the top goes up to the other end of the bench, and the sloping pipe on the left goes down to where I will locate a Clearview Mini-Cyclone (from Mini himself), when it arrives on Monday. This will obviously then go into the vac. It has allowed me to severely shorten the length of PITA flexible hose required to go to the Saw. This length allows for all mitre positions, but if I go compound cut (rarely) then I’ll need a slightly longer one (no problem to have two):

In the middle of the pic above you can see what is sold as a “Grey Water Diverter” and it works very well as an air diverter too! The baffling can be changed to suit various requirements, and this one has been set to allow either the saw or the top pipe, not both:

Half way along the top pipe, there is a T junction for a mid-bench hose. At the moment I have just jammed the crevice nozzle into a slot in the ceiling (which will give out eventually), so I’ll formalise that a little

You can see that rather than use an $toomany OEM vac hose adaptor I have used a piece of the 40mm water pipe on the end of the hose to accept various vac tools. This is so that I can use a $1 cap for the water pipe to shut off this hose when required, or I can shut it off with the cap at the T if the hose is getting in the way of a particular task.

This brings up a quick aside, and an excuse to justify my ongoing obsession with Liogier Rasps (they are like clamps – you can never have too many). The vac tools OD is a little too big for the ID of the water pipe, so what else to ream it with but a rasp eh? The link with never having too many is that I was able to select a rasp with the correct radius (close enough) for the water pipe.

This is the Drill Deck end. In this instance I have changed the Diverter to work on Either/Or OR 50% each (or indeed any other combo). This is so that I can use two hoses when I’m using Forstner bits – Brad Points are mostly fine with one hose, but as they get bigger they tend to throw chips to far away to be sucked in.

The outlet for the primary Drill Deck hose has been capped off for the purpose of this picture. I can also do this if I feel I’m losing pressure when only using one hose, and relying on the Diverter (but tests show that I’ve nothing to worry about).

Both hoses in place here. The one on the left is held quite securely adjacent to the drilling hole (special clamp rig that I made), and the one on the right can be handheld during and after drilling. This is a major move forward!

I would like to have had elbows with inspection holes so that I could blow out the pipe with compressed air if necessary, but they either don’t exist in this 40mm size, or my local crap hardware store doesn’t have them (the more likely).

To be continued in the next post…..

**FenceFurniture** · 24th August 2012, 09:57 PM

From the Vac itself to the Diverter at the Drill Deck end is a total of 7 metres of (mainly) pipe and vac hose. From the Diverter here is a 1 metre length for the primary hose, and a 1.5 metre length for the secondary hose, and that’s a total of 9.5 metres of ducting at work (in this particular format for drilling).

So, how does it perform then?

The result of single hose DE from one 8mm hole that is 42mm deep. This collection of chips (7 in all) is the entirety of what did not get extracted. For clarity I have moved the two large ones on the workpiece, as they got thrown a little distance away when they broke loose from the flutes of the drill.

This is the total unsucked chip result of drilling ten holes in very quick succession, without turning off either the Vac, or the drill (that’s how quick I was able to work because of not having chips everywhere). This is also identical to the results I have been getting for the last twelve months with the little vac. A couple of chips on the floor and elsewhere on the bench were collated for the purpose of the pic. Ignore the dust in the lateral hole – it’s only there because I drilled though an existing hole and it escaped.

This is the result of one hole with no dust extraction:

….plus the bench

…and the floor (and I was using my hand to restrict the chips onto the job)

Of course none of that was unexpected because I’ve been using the technique for some time. However, I had previously met my match with larger diameter Forstner bits, and whilst one hose did make a very large difference, I have always wanted to fool around with having two, but at the back of my mind I was thinking about the air streams possibly cancelling each other out or similar (hence why I wanted to be able to vary the ratio of intake between the two hoses, knowing that one was going to have a narrow nozzle, and the other quite probably plain hose with no tool).

...TBC

**FenceFurniture** · 24th August 2012, 10:01 PM

....and for purposes of titillation I will work it backwards this time. I settled on a 35mm Forstner bit, and to a depth of 25mm. This means that I would be removing 24 cubic centimetres (or 1.5 cubic inches) of timber, and this is what that 24cc expands into when it becomes chips:

This is what I have been getting with one hose DE for the last year, and whilst a vast improvement I still can’t see the mark for the next hole to be drilled:

This is what I can get now (sorry about the slight camera movement there):

Indeed, I could have had no chips whatsoever because I can just wave the secondary hose around during the drilling, but I thought if I put up a pic showing no chips at all then you wouldn’t believe me!

Furthermore, there is also a double benefit in keeping the Forstner bit cooler:

Removing chips as they occur keeps the bit cooler (by default if you like)
The air passing across the bit will aid the cooling (or at least I like to think so).

It’s really easy, and promotes safety because it encourages each and every job to be clamped so that I can use one hand to operate the press handle, and one for the hose. Both the drill and the vac are operated with a remote control, and in the half second or so that it takes the vac to rev up I switch on the drill. At the end I can either turn off the drill and suck up any escapees, or just use the “ALL OFF” feature of the remote control sockets.

When I’m drilling a series of holes in the same piece it’s still just as quick – I have a travelling table under this deck and so the job does not have to be unclamped.

This means, as I stated earlier, that I can drill ten holes with (say) 5mm between them in about a minute or so. FABULOUS!

All in all, I am absolutely stoked with this result! The ducting system is cheap, quick to install, clean, and incredibly versatile to use.

**NCArcher** · 24th August 2012, 10:29 PM

Nice work Brett.
I'm not quite organised enough to implement a similar system but I will keep it in mind for the future.
You'll love the Mini from Mini.
Mine's on a mobile rig that follows me from tool to tool. It does a great job.
Can you give us a bit more info on the vac? Sounds interesting.

**FenceFurniture** · 24th August 2012, 10:33 PM

Cheers Tony. Hey! You're a Sparkie, and well used to gluing up conduit - wassamatter with yer? Actual implementation took about three hours, and at least half of that was sitting smoking and thinking.

**NCArcher** · 24th August 2012, 10:39 PM

It's true, I am a conduit gluing machine

but it would take me a while to re-arrange the shed to give me enough clear space to install the duct work. And I would have to decide where to locate equipment instead of just pushing stuff out of the way and setting up in the cleared space

**Groggy** · 24th August 2012, 10:42 PM

Thread: Something different? Ducting a SHOP VAC – one happy chappy

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Something different? Ducting a SHOP VAC – one happy chappy

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