I have been hesitant to post this up because it is pretty redneck, but what the hell. Shop hacks don’t need to be pretty, just functional.
I purchased a proper dust collector for my machine after burning through a couple of vacuums. Yes, it is worth it and it does work better and quieter than a shop vac.
My M2 sled has a port to fit an elbow and then attach a vacuum or the dust collector, but it constantly falls off in the middle of a job, so I either need to pause the job to reconnect it, or just let it finish without dust collection. It frustrated me for quite a while until one day I got mad at it, and glued the sumbitch in. I added the corner brackets to help hold it there while the glue dried, and I could continue working.
My dust collector quit working on me a couple of months ago, and I finally took it in to Busy Bee where I got a lesson from one of the great guys that work there on what causes the problem and how to fix it. The fine dust particles get down into the switch and clogs up the contacts. The simple solution is to take the switch apart and (be very careful doing this as it can fall apart) gently clear out the dust. I’m not a big fan of having to do that all the time, and the little plastic pieces are going to get broken, so I hope that this silly hack with a ziplock freezer bag and zip tied it to the switch casing might help avoid this issue.
Yeehaw!
