WoodWorkers Guild of America » Tools

1. 

   Member Comment
   

   Member Comment
   Joined: Apr '10
   Posts: 171

   Aug. 06, 09 - 08:56AM

   I couldn't put a 400-500 pound cabinet saw in my shop and I wanted something made in the USA so I purchased a DeWalt 746 hybrid table saw. I love the saw for many reasons but it has a 2. 5 inch attachment for dust collection. Do you know any way I can improve this by retrofitting to a four inch connection? I want to hook a cyclone DC to it and I need to go to four inch. 2.5 inch loses to much suction at the tool. It works pretty well using a big shop vac but I know I can do better if I can increase the volume and cfm at the tool.

   Submitted: Tsantopi

   # Posted 1 year ago
2. 

   Paul Mayer
   

   preferred member
   Joined: Dec '09
   Posts: 102

   I am not familiar with that saw, but 2.5" dust port for a table saw is worthless. I would just take a good look and see if you can cut out a larger hole in the saw's body. If that saw has a shroud that goes up to the blade to capture dust, then you may be out of luck. If it is just sucking dust out of an enclosed saw, then you should be able to cut sheet metal to open it up.

   I make simple PVC dust ports by tracing and cutting a hole in MDF, and setting the PVC in the hole using caulk. Then I just screwed that to my table saw over the new larger hole. If your cyclone can pull enough cfm to use 6" pipe, I would strongly encourage you to do that. If not, 4" will still be worlds better than 2.5". I cut a hole in the front of my band saw and put a 4" port onto it, and it does far better than the stock 2.5" port.

   Paul http://www.vernswoodgoods.com

   # Posted 1 year ago
3. 

   Editor
   

   Editor
   Joined: Apr '10
   Posts: 80

   Aug. 16, 09 - 10:17PM

   I haven't heard of any kinds of retrofits for changing the dust collection port on this machine. DeWalt may have info on this, http://www.dewalt.com.

   Even if you stick with a 2.5" port on the saw, but collect with a dust collector instead of a shop vacuum, you'll gain ground in the battle against dust. As a general rule shop vacuums produce high suction but relatively low air flow. Dust collectors are just the opposite. Good dust collection on a table saw demands about 400 cfm, which you should easily get with almost any dust collector, but probably won't get out of a shop vacuum.

   George Vondriska, Editor

   # Posted 1 year ago

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