I really appreciate the feedback and help. I’m very new to the world of fabrication and am very slowly learning.
Good design comes from initial experience, an openness to outside input and willingness to experiment. The dust head is the result of MANY prototypes. Most of them never left the drawing or CAD stage! More than a handful were machined and tried.
If I can offer any advise it’s learn to sketch (and/or CAD)! If you can see a dragon, you can slay it.
Take your time choosing projects. They should be inspiring (I WANT THAT!) and seem like they are bit more than you know how to do, strive and let necessity be the mother of invention. Rinse. Repeat. Fail. Try again. Succeed.
Your dust collector was an inspiration and a way to learn more so I went with it.
Thank you! I wanted one for myself and as my friend Tim can tell you, I went nuts going back and forth until I finally found a way to do what I needed and yet had a project that was simple (so I could share it). As Einstein observed, a theory should be as simple as possible - and no simpler!
The differences between the Nomad 883 and 883 Pro are very favorable for machining but made the design very different for a dust head.
I followed your advice and deleted the secondary post and then edited the first one instead.
We don’t want people downloading files and based on the extension have software do weird things. Thanks for fixing that.
The forum will not accept uploads of any compressed format (ZIP, 7z, LHA, RAR, etc) as well as the original file format of .c2d so unfortunately I don’t see a work around at this point.
No ZIP files? I have to check that out.
… Hope that makes sense.
Yes, it does. Keep an eye on it. If the dust head rotates, the Nomad can jam - not good.
Skirts vs. brushes I believe you and have not one bit of clue which one would truthfully be better. I was just hoping that more of the suction would be forced to come through the back opening forcing more debris inward.
As I said, it’s an eternal battle. Different camps love their method and claim things work well. I’ve used both and am convinced there isn’t too much of a difference… but I find the brush a bit better. YMMV. Your reasoning is sound… but the physics is complex and surprises abound.
The dust collector is simply a shark vacuum with hepa filter.
That’s sufficient.
It will do until I can afford anything nicer.
I understand. Been there. Done that.
In fact the part that feeds into the back is just for show at the moment as I’m really feeding out the front almost directly to the vacuum.
That’s fine for the non-friable materials. For friable (“easily crumbed”) materials (e.g. wood, MDF, FR4, Garolite, Fiberglass, carbon composite), one wants the enclosure closed so that the vacuum creates a negative pressure and this keeps the nasty particles inside the enclosure.
I need to make another run to the store to get a 1 1/4" hose to 1 1/4" hose connector. Right now it’s just packing tape bridging the two.
I will not share the monstrosity I used for my early tests… I understand.
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