This is my first post of a dust collection cart that I made for my small workshop that serves multiple purposes:
o It provides a handy portable working surface of various shop projects
o It serves as my primary means of vacuuming dust from the floor and work surfaces
o It includes a dust separator made from a Dust Deputy that separates out 95+% of the wood dust into an easily removable container (and allows the shop vac to continue to produce maximum suction)
o It includes a noise reduction system for the shop vac that significantly muffles the shop vac noise (-10 dB)
o It has power outlets on both sides of the cart (one is switched)
o It allows easy connection of a vacuum hose to various woodworking tools in the shop to suck up most of the dust at the source of dust generation, including:
- Radial arm saw
- Kreg pocket screw jig
- Circular saw
As I am in the United States, I am not sure whether the parts I used are readily available in the UK, but you should able to modify the design as appropriate to suit your needs. All parts used are off-the-shelf parts (in the US). No specialty parts are needed.
I used a Ridgid WD1450 14-gallon 6 HP shop vac (available from Home Depot for $99). It has great reviews and provides excellent suction.
My source of inspiration for the noise reduction came from the following two posts by Mr. Schrunk:
1) How To Silence Your Shop Vac (written article and plans)
2) Build a Simple Box to Muffle Your Shop Vac (be sure to view the video and listen to the difference the noise reduction system makes)
The acoustical noise reduction padding that Mr. Schrunk used is expensive, and I decided to use some egg crate foam padding that I had in storage. You really don’t have to have any padding in the box to get a significant noise reduction (I don’t think the egg crate foam padding added that much to the noise reduction). Note that I did not get anywhere near the noise reduction that Mr. Schrunk got, but it is still perfectly fine for my purposes.
More detail for this project can be found at an Instructable that I wrote for this project.
o It provides a handy portable working surface of various shop projects
o It serves as my primary means of vacuuming dust from the floor and work surfaces
o It includes a dust separator made from a Dust Deputy that separates out 95+% of the wood dust into an easily removable container (and allows the shop vac to continue to produce maximum suction)
o It includes a noise reduction system for the shop vac that significantly muffles the shop vac noise (-10 dB)
o It has power outlets on both sides of the cart (one is switched)
o It allows easy connection of a vacuum hose to various woodworking tools in the shop to suck up most of the dust at the source of dust generation, including:
- Radial arm saw
- Kreg pocket screw jig
- Circular saw
As I am in the United States, I am not sure whether the parts I used are readily available in the UK, but you should able to modify the design as appropriate to suit your needs. All parts used are off-the-shelf parts (in the US). No specialty parts are needed.
I used a Ridgid WD1450 14-gallon 6 HP shop vac (available from Home Depot for $99). It has great reviews and provides excellent suction.
My source of inspiration for the noise reduction came from the following two posts by Mr. Schrunk:
1) How To Silence Your Shop Vac (written article and plans)
2) Build a Simple Box to Muffle Your Shop Vac (be sure to view the video and listen to the difference the noise reduction system makes)
The acoustical noise reduction padding that Mr. Schrunk used is expensive, and I decided to use some egg crate foam padding that I had in storage. You really don’t have to have any padding in the box to get a significant noise reduction (I don’t think the egg crate foam padding added that much to the noise reduction). Note that I did not get anywhere near the noise reduction that Mr. Schrunk got, but it is still perfectly fine for my purposes.
More detail for this project can be found at an Instructable that I wrote for this project.
