Great, thanks Tony! I am going to give those a shot and see how it goes!
You can play around with where you mount the ends of each spring to get different forces at full open and full close. I put the spring mounts on blocks that I moved around to different positions on both ends until I got what felt like optimal.
Hey guys. Great thread & these enclosures are awesome. We just got our XXL in the mail last week and have been modeling an enclosure based on Tony’s design. I’ve spend hours of obsessing and researching on here as well as youtube as I’m sure many of you have.
Our biggest concern besides dust control (suckit dust boot on order), is sound deadening. To accomplish this (hopefully), we are building Tony’s designed box (with somewhat larger dimensions as recommended), with 2x2’s as an interior frame, denim insulation & the thin strips to go on the 2x material, Franklin sound deadening caulk, and a second layer of 3/4" plywood. Inside of the enclosure will be 1.5" eggcrate type foam matting, which just arrived today from amazon, I’m just not at the point of installing it yet. We did install (2) separate layers of .25" acrylic for the front/top window. Theres about a 1.5" gap in between. Insulated similar to tony’s with Franklin caulk & epoxy to hold the acrylic to itself. (still need to finish the top of enclosure, and sides of the front panel).
No idea if all the extra work of insulating/adding an extra layer of 3/4" material will make a dB difference, but I’ll some some testing with the cell phone when the project is complete.
Also thinking for the struts I’ll need to order much stronger considering the added weight.
We also split the back into two pieces, just incase tiling larger projects down the line might become a possiblity.
Here’s a few pictures just to give an idea where this project is at. I’ll update more as I continue the project.
A very sincere thank you to everyone that has shared invaluable information on all your work. Much respect!
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Looking good. Make sure you have an air intake to allow for makeup air for the dust collection.
Thanks craig, I’m guessing I’ll have to drill a hole (maybe 1.5"?) And build a carpeted or insulated baffle system to keep the sound down. And mount this to the enclosure somewhere.
Attaching an updated
pic with the front on the enclosure.
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Quick update. Installed 110lb gas springs, led lighting, and foam to inside compartment. Sound dB test (Just running router inside cabinet as follows) :
Room dB 42.4
2ft from router (sitting in enclosure) 82 dB
2ft from enclosure (door closed) 48db.
Very happy with how quiet it is running! Will post a video soon.
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Very nice. I think making it taller and putting a high stretch dust collection hose down through the top is the best way to do it. The light strips are a good idea too. Thanks for sharing!
It looks like the acoustic foam might make a significant difference. Take some measurements while it is cutting some pine or plywood using a 1/4" bit. That will give a good baseline and I’ll run the same test with mine to see how much difference the foam makes. I lined mine with acoustic foam for a while but it didn’t seem to make much difference but I didn’t use as much as you did. Having the door covered probably helps.
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I just saw the last picture at first and missed the double wall construction with the insulation in between. That should make a lot of difference.
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Guys I gotta ask a question in regards to an air inlet on the box due to the vacuum…
Fyi . I have it sealed up pretty tight and my suckit dust boot arrived over the weekend. Just about ready to start cutting in the next couple days and running some dB tests. I did order a router speed controller for the shop vac as previously mentioned in the thread.
The air inlet, would a 3" hole be appropriate? Overkill? I would assume having an open hole would let out a ton of noise. Would the fix to this be adding a baffle system out of 2x4s and plywood, with carpet or insulation attached throughout?
A labyrinth type entry like you describe can help a lot. The longer, the better. I’d recommend a hole at one end of the enclosure and a labyrinth along the back side of the box. Be sure there is no “direct path” through the labyrinth.
excellent Mike. Thanks for the input. I’ll post a pic of the build.
Here’s mine, it’s 90% finished. I intended to do a write up but it’s taking a while so I thought i’d throw it up in here for now. The front and rear panel both lift to allow access. The viewing panels are 3mm acrylic sheet that is recessed into the front and side panels.
I’m working on a “blow” rather than “suck” concept for chip removal and the floor of this enclosure has two large slots at the rear connected to two dust collection ports hooked up to 4" dust extractor hose. This is because I like to see the cutting (for trouble shooting) and don’t like the idea of working around a dust removal boot. We’ll see how that works in practice though.
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On longer jobs the first indication I generally have of something going wrong is a change in the tone of cutting, or hearing an axis miss a step, this looks so well built that you may not hear those things. Do you have any issues with it being too quiet?
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I have yet to cut anything with the machine. But I guess I’ll find out soon. Awesome looking enclosure and shop!
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Our enclosures don’t have noise deadening material, but we used small rectangular air filters cut in the side or rear, wherever good airflow would be allowed. Personally I can’t tell any difference in sound levels with or without the openings.
The Festool dust Extractors are louder than the DeWalt routers with the enclosures enclosed.
Don’t worry about a carpeted baffle system until you listen to it with just a 2" hole first. You might not need the baffle. Just leave enough room inside or outside the hole to add something later if you need to.
If you need something I would try a Hayden central vac muffler first. They are cheap and super easy to add. https://www.thinkvacuums.com/vaculine-central-vacuum-square-muffler-765500w.html?account=&st-t=adwords&vt-k=&vt-mt=&vt-ap=1o3&gclid=CjwKCAjw_b3cBRByEiwAdG8WqiPiax9ui2jRu9o_Fcmql9zLtDCmAVp4cQ5_fq2lf0eNb3LmiyunkRoCtXgQAvD_BwE
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You really need a vacuum system to keep dust down. Otherwise you will have an enclosure full of dust degrading your mechanicals and you will be forcing some dust out of the enclosure. A low flow compressed air stream + a dust shoe would be fine.
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hi Tony
I like what you built.
how did you manage to control the light and speed of your dewalt router from that control panel?
I am very interrested in that .
thanks for your answer.