Advice wanted on whether current shop vac may be powerful enough

[jmgallag]

Hi,

I have this vac: http://www.searsoutlet.com/5-gal-5-0-Peak-HP-Wet-Dry-Wall-Vac/d/product_details.jsp?pid=9207. The specs say 94CFM and 45 WC, and the hose is 1 7/8". Only my 10" Grizzly table saw has a 4" dust port. I am considering building a Thien collector to sit on top of a 32 gallon Rubbermaid trashcan that I already have.

My plan is to use the two hoses that came with the vac, connecting the dust collector to the saw with the 14' hose , and use the 7' hose between the vac and the dust collector.

Is my shop vac powerful enough to collect most of the chips and saw dust that would come from the table saw? Has anyone experimented with smaller shop vacs?

Thanks,
Jim

[bbain]

A shop vac won't move enough air to collect all the dust from a table saw. 

[phil (admin)]

A shop vac won't move enough air to collect all the dust from a table saw.

I agree w/ this.

And I use a shop-vac piped to a network and a separator in my shop.  My excuse:  All my tools have 2.5" ports.

Most of the stuff I miss comes over the top of the blade, and I've been in plenty of shops with giant DC's where they're still missing the stuff coming off the top of the blades, and their floors don't seem any cleaner than mine, either.

I think DC is really all about the 90-10 rule.  90% of the collection requires 10% of the work, the last 10% of dust, well...

To the OP:  I don't think that small a shop vac is going to be the answer.  My Ridgid "6-HP" model draws about 13 or 14 amps, if you're going to try a shop-vac based solution look for something that almost trips a 15-amp breaker.

[jmgallag]

Makes sense, thanks for the advice.

Jim

[alan m]

what kind of table saw.
I use my festool ct22 on my dewalt portable table saw. it works great.

a shop vac would be useless on any bigger machines

[jmgallag]

It's a Grizzly G0444Z, 10" contractor style. On this model, the motor hangs out the back. Here is a pic of the back of a G0444Z: http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/j-4AAOSwRLZT0A2Q/$_1.JPG

The back is open. I figured I would need to make some sort of shroud for the back.

[BernardNaish]

I have had success with a powerful shop vacuum. It has a 2 1/2" diameter hose and worked quite well with a 3' length of hose connected to a 3' length of 2 1/2" plastic pipe manifold, complete with blast gates to extract from 12" site thicknesser, or a jointer or a belt  sander. One downside was that all that busy motor made a lot of noise. If you are aligning your inlet to the circumference of your trash can so the air and wood debri spin around the inside walll try it without a baffle first. I found that the fine filter in the vacuum cleaner did not block all that often even without a baffle. It was not perfect but worked OK.

[jmgallag]

It looks like experiments will be needed.

[retired2]

It looks like experiments will be needed.

You're biggest challenge might be enclosing the space under the blade so you have some chance of collecting the dirt with your shop vac.  That outboard motor complicates things a bit.