Dust boot with better visibility

[Brotron (Greg)]

I like to see what the tool is doing and keep an eye on the chip clearance with aluminum. I also want to use a focused air blast on the cutter even with the brush and vacuum.

So this is my re-mix in progress. The hose and strip brush are on order and I’m still working on the air blast that goes with it so I haven’t tested it yet but it looks promising. I’ve never used the vac and blast at the same time but I think I can fine tune the air pressure to control the flow.

[LiamN (Liam Newcombe)]

Indeed,

I can’t stand not being able to see what the cutter is actually doing. A top window is a good idea, In my last iteration of dust boot I went with PVC as a curtain (as per industrial fridges) in place of the brushes so that I could see what the cutter was up to.

I have to manually adjust height of the boot on the spindle after a tool change and it occasionally gets nibbled at by the cutter or collet but I consider the PVC to be a consumable part, a 1.5m x 1m sheet of 1.5mm thickness was not much money on eBay.

[Brotron (Greg)]

That works too! I picked up the idea for the clear top from the inventables version, seemed like a good thing to retrofit onto my Nomad 3. I saw someone here added a camera which is a cool idea also, would be awesome to have a high speed microscope cam in there for slow motion playback of the cutting operation. I’m toying with the idea of hijacking some of the light power from the Nomad case and re-routing it inside the dust boot.

[Brotron (Greg)]

Here is a shot of the parts in play so far

[LiamN (Liam Newcombe)]

@Brotron

I saw someone here added a camera which is a cool idea also, would be awesome to have a high speed microscope cam in there for slow motion playback of the cutting operation. I’m toying with the idea of hijacking some of the light power from the Nomad case and re-routing it inside the dust boot.

Calling @Julien I hear you have some experience with cameras in the danger zone

[Julien]

I may or may not have a drawer full of USB cameras after recovering from my camera addiction

[Brotron (Greg)]

Since I have a drawer full of mini 2K displays from my stint in VR head set prototyping, I think our drawers would get along… what about a thermal cam to watch for cutter heat? anyone try that yet? This is probably an unproductive rabbit hole that will lead to hours of watching the cutter head instead of getting stuff made:) so many side quests