Making a Drum Sander - Part 6 - Dust Collection

When truing the drum cylinder I was collecting the dust simply by means of a handheld vacuum tube. That is not practical, of course, so I have made a simple cover to which I can attach the vacuum.

Because this drum is not rotating at high velocities and there is no danger of something heavy flying of it that could cause an injury, I made a simple cover from a board and some cardboard. The board is attached across the drum and has a hole in the middle with a reduction for attaching the vacuum. The sides are from cardboard that slots into cutouts in the drum-holding columns. The edges of the cardboard are reinforced with heavy-duty paper.

To reduce air turbulence that would negatively affect the dust collection, I initially just glued two stripes of paper inside the cover. They helped, but they were not very stable.

As a final solution, I ground two offcuts of styrofoam and glued them into the cover in such a way that there is just a few mm gap between them and the drum. That has significantly improved the dust collection, only minimal amounts escape, and mostly bigger particles which settle very close to the machine. I will use a respirator when working on this machine nevertheless, of course.

Next time I will write a little about how the finished machine works. It has been functional for several weeks now and I have spent a significant amount of time working on it.