I have struggled for a long time with dust collection for my M2. I have burned out 3 vacuum cleaners from running them for too long at a time, and they burn out the motor brushes and stop working. The M2 has a poor design in that the little acrylic plate where it creates an opening for dust to go is just too narrow, and it gets clogged up easily. If you look at my previous posts, you will see that I also struggled with the piping and things falling apart mid-cut because it was just static-stuck into the recess. I got mad at it and glued the sumbitch in place, and now it makes it hard for me to make adjustments.
I’ve been getting frustrated with it, because after burning through several vacuums, I bought a proper dust collector which I have had connected to the machine for a long time (like a year and a half), and still couldn’t get it to work very well. If I disconnect the dust collector from the machine, it sucks up everything in sight, so it is not a problem with the dust collector, there is a bottle-neck in the setup. So today I decided to do something about it.
DISCLAIMER and WARNING: Redneck fixes are sketchy and may not work out. Do stuff like this at your own risk! I post this more for entertainment than for actual instruction, so take it all with a grain of salt. I only take responsibility for wrecking my own stuff, and if you do what I did and it doesn’t work out, don’t blame me.
It’s hard to tell from the pictures, because there is a 90 degree elbow glued and screwed to the sled, and I can’t really do much about that any more. The gap from the plexiglass (or acrylic) window on the M2 sled that leads into a two inch elbow gives a gap of not much more than one eighth of an inch to suck the dust out. It gets clogged fairly quickly, and becomes useless. I have had to keep blowing it clean with an air compressor, and doing that several times during a single job is a pain in my arse.
So today I pulled the sled off the machine and did something about it. I put an impact drill bit on the end of an extension, and using a flashlight to see, I drilled out several holes in the top of the elbow pipe to make a wider opening, and then using the drill bit like a dremel, I cut out a crude curve to open up the top of where that elbow is glued to the sled where it lines up against the clear panel.
Have a laugh if you want, I kinda did too. Masking tape to hold my bit into the extension because the magnet fell out. It’s okay, it still works.
I have a bicycle hook that I have bent to hold the M2 sled when I need to remove the chains. Today I was feeling lazy, so I moved the sled and drove a 2” screw into the wasteboard and hung the sled, then moved about 20mm down to put some slack in the chains.It did work, but I would probably suggest 40mm, as it is a bit taught.
Bad focal point on this picture, but it shows what I was trying to work with. That pipe sticks out about four inches, and curves ninety degrees. It was a challenge to keep the bit straight on the end of an extension! lol.
This is a clearer picture of what I did on the inside of the elbow to create more space for airflow. It’s not pretty, and it is crazy hokey how I did it.
It does work way better now. This is after about 90 minutes of cutting, and the dust is minimal.
I have an idea to try on the next cut, to make a clear deflector that will cover the majority of the hole, and if it works, it will be hilarious.