Wood working is great but it can certainly get the shop dusty. [BigD] is a wood worker and needed a way to keep his shop from getting super dusty while sanding or routing. He ended up making a pretty slick dual-use downdraft table with a hidden filtration system.
The table’s frame is made from standard 2-by dimensional lumber you’d likely see most shop tables made from. It was built so that the top of the table would be flush with the table of the table saw. This allows the down-draft table to also act as an out feed support for the table saw, making it easier to cut longer pieces of wood.
To allow airflow to pull any generated dust down, a plethora of holes were drilled in the table top. Down below are a couple sealed chambers, one for the incoming dust and one for the air blower that creates the down-draft air flow. The two chambers are separated by a pair of filters which keep the dust from being blown back into the shop. A little door on the side of the table allows access to clean out the accumulated dust and debris. Now [BigD] can sand up a storm on his down-draft table without breathing in a sapling worth of dust.
All fine until you drop a screw.
This. I think in time there will be some screen under those holes – dust gets through but the smaller parts don’t.
Maybe a spring loaded sheet with raised bits to fit in the holes interspersed with holes to allow you to open the vents but when closed the holes are flush with the top of the table, keeping a flat work area. The air could be used to drop the cover and it could spring into one corner and latch until you press a button.
You dont work with really small screws ever do you? the ones that make a 0806 smt resistor look large?
And how often do you use them on a WOOD cutting table?
Dropping a screw is not really a problem as it has been nicely designed so easily accessed (have a look at the build photos – the handle on the left side, in the main photo here, is the access to the filter/bin and the top grid can be lifted off).
It’s arguably no worse than if you left rubbish on the floor and dropped a screw.
A screen slung above the bin would still help though. Save rifling through all the collected dust.
You’ve never worked with woodworking power tools before have you? Any screen that will catch a screw will be completely clogged in about ten minutes.
My thought too, a knife bar magnet by the catch bins should help you keep your sanity.
Fantastic. In small areas everything needs to be multi-functional, and this takeoff table workbench dust collector is spot on. Excellent work!
Air hockey table in reverse!
Finally a hack that sucks in a good way! Oh and as for the screw comments, try this hack, could be very easily retrofitted here. http://hackaday.com/2009/10/13/diy-dyson-vac-hack/
I would have tried to get the filter up higher so that the whole thing worked more or less like a gravity filter. That way the actual filter would rarely need cleaning.
He definitely has the right idea with the squirrel cage motor – low noise. A normal ‘shop vac’ like motor would drive you insane lol.
Wow this could be the basics of a vacuum forming system for plastic fabrication — flat surface with holes and a vacuum below; all you need is a slider-over plastic sheet holder and heating element.
A few rows of magnets near the edge of the chute would solve the screw/nut dropping problem.
Does anyone have a current link to a web page with plans for this?
Alas, the link to this project is broken and has been for several years. Not only that, but although there are references to the thread on the woodnet forums, but the thread itself is gone (as are many old posts)
Thankfully there is a copy on archive.org.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150906005847/http://www.forums.woodnet.net/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=6479459