An open source CNC Dust Shoe

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If you don’t have a good performing dust collection system, the joy CNC machining will quickly fade away. Especially when you realise how much dust this kind of subtractive manufacturing creates.

We upgraded our Shapeoko 2 with a Makita RT0700C router.

This router is air cooled. And the air the router use to cool the motor creates a jet stream downwards.

An air cooled router is an expert at distributing dust evenly out in your workshop.

And the Shapeoko 2 does not include any form for dust collection, and therefore it was necessary to make one.

Challenges with a dust shoe and our first solution proposals:

  • Airflow from the router goes directly downwards: Change the airflow direction through the dust shoe.
  • Attaching the dust shoe to the router: Add a small gap and tighten it with an hex nut to attach it to the router.
  • Attaching a vacuum cleaner: Create a friction fit attachment for the appropriate vacuum cleaner.

After this was hammered down, we booted up our CAD-tools, heated the 3D-printer and printed the creation with ABS.

Scroll down for a link to a downloadable STL CAD file.

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The Creation

And the dust shoe needs some kind of skirt to make it easier for the vacuum to collect the dust. We created the skirt out of a small piece of foam (from a small foam seat pad).

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As you can see from the picture, it was a real mess without the skirt. But with: No dust escaped this dreaded super vacuum cleaner & dust shoe combo!

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The dust-collecting capabilities is outstanding, but it adds some challenges as well. Amongst them is the need to remove the shoe to change tool, maybe the most annoying.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

You can download the (STL) 3D-model here.

You can download the original Autodesk Inventor file (.ipt) 3D-model here.

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