Thread: Incra CleanSweep

When you talk about the fascination of a sealed box and pulling dust through the router and air entry through the insert rings, you of course are talking about the traditional incorrectly designed systems - this is not the system I am in the process of designing - and in that case I agree with those observations and will add another problem to the old design, using a more powerful extractor creates the very real problem of starving the router motor of air and overheating it.

A combination of fence and below table extraction is required but the exact configuration needs to be implemented in a way that allows it to be quickly and simply changed for various routing situations, each of us have our own goals with a router table, I am also well aware of the limitations and safety issues, some jobs need to done in plunge mode, but a lot of what I do is carried out on a router table, dust removal is my number one goal for this table and through the fence extraction will NOT work with a zero clearance fence, just as extraction through the insert rings will NOT work in a lot of routing situations. There is no fascination here - just a logical approach to completely redesigning the way router table dust extraction is implemented on my table.


Any design that requires a sloping bottom and a port located there in order to remove chips and dust is the result of incorrectly designed extraction, OR a DE with insufficient capacity for correct dust capture - no dust should reach the bottom of the cabinet or the router intake.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

Some years a ago a bloke placed a barrier under the table that was cut to shape to surround the router or lift fairly closely. From memory it created about a 50mm space under the table and was sealed all round. The air entry was through the opening under the router which he had deliberately not made too tight and he attached the extractor to one side of it. As the air entered the cavity at the base of the router it grabbed the chips and dust and they were then extracted and the router ran in clean air. Combine that with a hollow fence and I think it would be a fairly good set up and it leaves the router readily accessible and out of the dust path. It also adds the possibility of not needing a cabinet at all just the top which could be clamped to a bench for use if space is tight then stored somewhere when not in use.

Now this is closer to my below table design, however I still have a cabinet, but it is used in a different way and not just for DE. I also have a number of jigs and router accessories that I want to store in a full moveable router table with draws, so in my case a standalone table/cabinet is the best option for my situation. Through the fence extraction and everything from the insert plate and above / below construction is being redesigned.

Take this for what it is worth as I have not done it and I am only guessing it might work. The need for air entry in a hollow fence can be accommodated by the extraction port being at one end and the air entry being at the other end. The bits come off the router bit, flung into the fence cavity and the passing air will pick them up. The internal fence dimensions will have to be sized to the extractor of course. This may sound weird but a flat fence backed by and attached to a piece of PVC with an entry into the pipe behind the rout bit would be perfect but it might not be very photogenic.

Hi Chris, I've seen a couple of fence designs along those lines, I think Incra have at least part of that in a design, but they may not be using the passing air stream to create a negative pressure at the fence opening (which I have found can be seriously beneficial as I use this with my Band saw extraction and Router below table testing), I think Incra may be using only one end of the fence as a port though.

It's also very hard to describe the DE I've decided come up with for the table without actually building or sketching something, however I did eventually find a guy who had built something similar, but he had not really taken it any further for various routing situations - but it really worked as I have proved to myself in testing. Unfortunately time is not on my side at the moment but hopefully I'll get something at least drawn up in the near future - the current butchered test table top is just to much of a mess with test holes, slots and modified fence layouts to make any sense of at the moment.

BTW, the Incra dust collection box appears to only work correctly with their modified insert rings, I guess the penny finally dropped somewhere. Now imagine that whole insert ring and insert plate becoming one simple removable plate independent of the router, and the DE optimised to take advantage of a massive increase in flow, especially when using a fence.

I have just finished my router table and thoroughly tested it. I decided to have a 4" dust port on the fence connected to my DC and a hose from the dust port on the triton router base to a shop vac. With round over and chamfer bits there is no dust. Nothing in the cabinet, nothing on the floor or table top. I tried a stopped dado and once again, no dust. Did a through dado and there was a small amount on the floor and tabletop. Took away all hoses and found the same through dado made a lot of dust. So I'm very pleased with my set up. Having hoses just above and just below the collet, as someone mentioned earlier, works well. IMHO this is a far better solution than Incra's cleansweep.

Yeah I'm going to give the clean sweep a miss. I think I'm going to go with a V design under the router to help direct the dust toward the shoot.

Like the one below

RT Dust.jpg

OK some pics

20161230_163411.jpg20161230_163448.jpg

Every time I load pics from my phone they come out sideways or upside down. Anyway, the small hose out the back is attached to the plastic dust port on the Triton and then attached to a vac and the 4" dust port is attached my DC. Quite a few people on the web have set it up this way. A few early tests have worked well with little or no dust but I don't know if this is optimal for my setup and whether I have good air flow below the cabinet. Daz, I thought about a similar floor design as well but it's sort of like cleaning up after the mess is made rather than preventing the mess to start with. If I use the correct "zero clearance insert" ring, then there is zero or little dust on the floor of my cabinet and if there is then that becomes part of my clean up routine when I've finished for the day but if your router doesn't have a dust port then that design will save you some time.

EDIT The two knobs hold a perspex guard. Hard to see it. It doesn't go up and down but I can use clamps if I want it lower or higher. It slides with the fences

Dazm, I'd be keen to hear how the V-design goes.

What is interesting is that on my basic box, with just a few holes drilled somewhat-arbitrarily to introduce "chaos" in the air, plus a 4" pipe on a basic 2hp dusty, it is scrubbed clean.

The intent was to create a vortex, but random buffeting chaos will do, as long as the little cabinet is scrubbed clean.

I think there is no real need for Barris extra hose, but I can see the reason why. Keeping the router from potentially ingesting any dust in the first place seems sensible.

When you run some work over it, please do get back with a few photos?

This discussion is making me want to rebuild mine with some "new and improved"-ments.

RT Dust.jpg

This is a variation of a very old design - This is like putting a bucket under a sink to catch water leaking from the drain pipe, what they should have done is find out why the water is leaking - in other words, find out why the dust extraction is so pathetic that it is allowing dust and chips to reach the bottom of the dust enclosure in the first place.

barri and CHRIS both mentioned using the Triton's base plate pickup connected to a VAC - This is the best option within the current limitations of insert plate and insert ring design - it's not ideal because of insert ring design and router base casting design, but it sure beats a poorly designed extraction cabinet and extraction port. If the extraction cabinet is designed CORRECLTY then it CAN work even better than base pate extraction, and you don't need a VAC connection, but it has to be done correctly.

Repeating what I said earlier - It's lucky in a way that dust extraction is so poor in the above photo - why?

Most routers, when mounted in a table have their air intake at the bottom (in the pic above) and the fan driven cooling exit at the top or side near the top, (base plate) with this poor cabinet / extraction design you are firstly allowing dust to be drawn into the low router motor intake, and if you actually had a decent extractor pulling a high volume air out of the cabinet, you MAY have a real chance of starving the router cooling intake and overheating the router. Not a problem if it's designed correctly.

Something to think about with these designs is this FACT - If you actually need to funnel chips and dust into the extraction port, then it is should be obvious that dust is NOT being held in suspension by the extraction air flow, dust is simply falling to the bottom of the enclosure. It MUST then imply that very little through table extraction is taking place and the dust collection design is NOT working correctly.

I did another experiment. With profile routing my setup works brilliantly. No dust. However, with dados the dust collection is OK but there still is a fair amount of dust accumulating on the outfeed end of the table. A bit on the floor. I then took my 4" hose and placed it in the router chamber and rigged up a temporary box. Incra cleansweep type. Used a wide hole insert ring. This worked very well. Still some dust on the table but none on the floor. A big improvement but I worry the router could overheat in this arrangement. I also tried attaching the hose on the left of the table in line with the dado. Sprayed dust goes straight into the hose. This worked even better but the hose obviously gets in the way with long dados. I guess I could attach it just to the side.
My conclusion.... If you do 90% profile routing then my current setup is hard to beat. If you do a fair amount of dadoing then a hose in line with the dado and slightly above the timber works the best. Even better get someone to hold the hose and move it with the timber. This is obviously not practical. I'm still very uncomfortable with an enclosed box.

Hi barri, your findings coincided with mine for this type of dust extraction, and as you noted, likely all you need in most of your work. Further testing with modified insert rings and other below table modifications to make use of a 150mm port flow, finally removed everything that tried to shoot out of an open dado.

As far as an enclosed box goes, mine is not, the intake for the router is ducted from clean air through the bottom of the enclosure, (duct follows the rise and fall of the router) when combined with extraction vacuum you now argument cooling airflow through the router motor. BTW the box (cabinet) should not be built as a sealed enclose, however for reasons that I mentioned in a previous post, as extraction volume and flow rate increase it's important to not rely on air inside the cabinet actually reaching the router intake in sufficient volume, so a simple separate clean air intake is the way to go IMHO.

EDIT: BTW that separate air intake to the router has NO effect on the ease or simplicity of removing the router.

MandJ, perhaps post that photo showing the tube extending from the bottom of the router to underneath the table here. It will make more sense to people looking at your description.

At first, when I saw the photo I couldnt work out why you did as you did, until I considered how a TRA001 sucks in its air. Your design is a good one.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

MandJ, perhaps post that photo showing the tube extending from the bottom of the router to underneath the table here. It will make more sense to people looking at your description.

At first, when I saw the photo I couldnt work out why you did as you did, until I considered how a TRA001 sucks in its air. Your design is a good one.

Does this mean putting a piece of 4" pipe over the end of the router to use it like a snorkel to ensure that the router is getting clean air from outside the dust enclosure?

I think I mentioned doing this on the forum years ago but possibly in a previous "regeneration" of myself. It works well provided you can find somewhere for the source of clean air that wont pick up chips and fine dust from the floor. The amount of air the triton sucks into its top is more than most people would think.

Cheers

Doug

I've been using a similar snorkel arrangement mounted on my circular saw that I use in my table saw for some time. It certainly keeps dust out of the motor.

IMG_0347.jpg