If I’m using an enclosure, is it necessary to be running the vacuum the whole time it’s cutting?
For the best results, absolutely. Just because you’re not breathing in the dust doesn’t mean the machine won’t be. Dust will get all over the machine’s linear motion components, wicking away oil and forcing you to do maintenance more often. And if you have a router or air cooled VFD spindle, all that dust going through the motors will reduce its lifespan. Use dust collection, as much as possible.
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To add onto what Winston was saying you should not just have a dust collector / vacuum. You really should have an air filter in the general area. This can be as simple as a 20x20 furnace filter bungie corded to a box fan. I did not realize just how much dust gets by my vacuum until I put a filter in my CNC enclosure. It was turning brown within a day of basic use.
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Could you post a photo of how you added an additional air filter and the setup?
Personally I don’t care about the mess. It’s about the machine for me.
If you don’t remove chips you can cut them twice, which can cause you issues.
They can also cause fire issues.
Dust damage to your lungs is accumulative. So what you breathed in yesterday, the day before and so and so on… Dust is not good to breath. Even with an enclosure the dust still gets in your environment just less of it. However as @wmoy stated dust is not good for your mechanics.
Your dust collection should be running. You need to regularly inspect your dust collection system for leaks and filters. A stopped up filter reduces your dust collection efficiency. Some shop vacs collect dust in one end but blow it out the exhaust. So that is why HEPA filters are a good thing if you are going to replace a simple shop vac.
So use your dust extraction but make sure you are collecting the dust and not just redistributing it elsewhere in the shop.
My Jet dust collector has an Onieda Super Dust Deputy and I fill my dust collector bag about every 3-4 weeks. So keep up with maintenance on your Shapeoko but also on your dust collection system. You might be surprised about how much chips and dust collects in a relatively short amount of time. My Jet collects dust from all my wood shop tools and my 20 Inch planner can really fill it up quickly. So my Shapeoko adds to the dust but is a tiny fraction of the dust I collect from all the other machines in my shop.
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It is an older picture from when I was building my enclosure but you can see the filter I built into left wall:
I have four PC fans on the other side pulling air through the filter.
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One doesn’t realize how much sawdust actually comes from one cut, either from their machine, or from any of the other machines in our shops. I have been building a custom bed frame and the amount of sawdust I have created over the time of this build is enough to fill up two 5 gallon buckets easily.
I have two shop vacs that I use both sometimes on my S5Pro, one running with the machine and the other collecting sawdust that the other one missed. My Sweepy doesn’t do a very good job collecting all the time. The design is a little off and wont get the sweepy down far enough to cover a good portion of the tool.
Anyways, I also have 2 other shop vacs, one is a HEPA vac and the other a standard smaller shop vac. I also have a dust collection system, but it isn’t piped in yet. All it has is a single drop to the ground with a broom sweep in to pick a lot of dust off the floor after sweeping to it.
I didn’t realize the amount of loose fine dust until I got to looking deeper in my shop and noticed a fine dust cover all over the motorcycle that is in my shop. I want to get my leaf blower out, open the large door, and start from the back of the shop and blow all of this dust out. I have to, periodically, take my air compressor and blow out all nooks and crannies on the machine where the vacuums can’t clean up. I also blow the dust out of the spindle motor so the bears don’t start breaking down from present dust and movement.
Exactly why I don’t “sweep” my garage or shop anymore. Dedicated shop vac w/cyclone, just vacuum the floor and done. If you think you have dust on things in the shop then wait util you start vacuuming your floor space. It only took one vacuuming to realize that I might get the larger particles with the broom, but in reality I’m just moving the fine dust around without vacuuming only to become airborne and landing on everything else. That’s not even considering what you breathe in without knowing it and trust me you do.
I fight dust all the time. It just seems never ending when I clean and the very next day it looks like I hadn’t cleaned at all. I try not to use shop vacs as much as possible, unless I can have a door open and I have the exhaust port facing outside. My other issue is wind. I have to open my big front door to run some machines and if it is windy outside, depending on the direction of the wind, the dust just flies around the shop as if I am blowing it around with a blower.
I thought about building in negative air flow systems in pocket areas of my shop in order to help pull the air toward this unit so flying dust will get sucked up and blown out the shop outside through thru dust ports. There are filtration devices that can be hung in a shop as well that help. I can wear dust masks but they are not as effective when I have a full beard and the mask can’t seal to my face to block any dust from coming through my beard. I am not going to shave just to use a dust mask. So, I have to find other alternatives to deal with dust. My shop is still in it’s infancy stage and I have a lot to do to make it efficient. Hell, I don’t even have insulation on my walls so I can keep warm or cool in my shop during the seasons. So, no heat means some days not working in the shop when the temp is in the single digits like it is today.
You are right though, the dust does still go into my lungs and I need to put things in place to help clean the air better so I am safe myself.
are you using an enclosure?
An option is to build a portable air “purifier” from a small box fan with standard A/C filters. You would be surprised how much it remove from the air.