Well, I pulled the trigger in the first of March and ordered the Shapeoko 5 Pro 4x4 from the Robot Store here in Canada, as to avoid those nasty custom charges . And the unit is still on backorder. I also ordered the VFD spindle and its on its way to us now. I’m excited to start our journey and while waiting for the unit I have been preparing our shop for its arrival.
I took Williams advise and applied it to our table, which now has two layers of foam in between our 3/4 inch plywood to dampen the noise and then I wrapped my workbench with 1 x 6 pine and gave the table top a 1/2 lip to help any bits i set down not to fall off the workbench. My bench is 34 inches high and 64 inches square with a flat top.
I purchased the Stealth Dewalt Shop Vac and its super quit and plan to use it for dust collection. I’m planning to use a cyclone for collecting the chips. So my question is what dust collection hose do i need to purchase in order for it to fit both my spindle and cyclone. Any info on this would be great.
I should add a Shout out from Edmonton Alberta, where spring has finally sprung and the weather is slowly improving. Looking forward to getting my CNC set up and I think we have most everything ready and in place.
I would suggest using PVC pipe for the fixed portion of your dust collection. With the PVC ending above your table(z), terminating in the front(y) middle(x) area. Then just enough hose to handle the full range of motion.
I could not find the picture, but I remember someone showing their build that had the PVC pipe going up both sides, only one side was actually used for the dust collection, the other side was just to increase the stability. Seemed like a pretty smart idea.
And while your Shapeoko 5 handles static discharge better than the previous models, I would suggest searching previous discussions on the subject. You can ground the PVC pipe, and even the hose using the (spring) wire inside the hose.
You didn’t ask this question, but since you mentioned Canada and a VFD. Also look for discussions about the “warm up” procedure Carbide 3D recommends when your shop is cold.
That setup is similar to mine. I run from the Dewalt to a cyclone with the supplied Dewalt hose. Then from the cyclone to the PVC with a short section of 2.5” and from the PVC to the router with a longer section of 2.5”.
Bias the stack toward the front slightly since the router is on the front of the gantry.
I thought about a swivel at the top but I have not needed it.
