The welding fumes go through a special filter. It is the suction for the plasma table that goes outside, but there is very little particulate in that air stream. Even taking the dust collection air outside, you still need good dust separation and filtration or the neighbors, landlord, city, TCEQ, and possibly others would be all over us. And once you have dust collection, something, either a user or a machine needs to empty it.
I think the system mentioned dumps sawdust into an outside dumpster for collection by a recycler or waste management. It’s not designed to spew literal dust into the air.
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That was the idea yes.
Episode Woodshop clean up
It still astounds me the things you find when cleaning. I walked by the Kapex and it was wrapped in a nice green ribbon, which made me stop and wonder. And as the Christmas story goes, “What to my wondering eyes should appear” ? Any Guesses
A badly damaged saw blade on the Kapex. Someone had to do something really interesting to deforn a blade that much. That blade is headed to the knife maker raw materials pile.
New $160 blade installed and all is well.
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As much as it hurts to see such things, and it really boggles the mind how much craziness happens on a routine basis. I have enjoyed this thread. It doesn’t shame anyone directly.
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that’s why it’s called Hardwood. 
seriously it probably hit an embedded nail.
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This is a great idea. What would it take to make it happen?
Feel free to split this into its own topic.
What’s a shadowboard? Do you have a video of how it works for the folks playing along at home?
It’s a bunch of images of the tools in the tool drawers or on the tool wall to tell people where they go. Just takes someone motivated to make them
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As Pearce has described: basically sillouttes of the object so you can see what is missing. The other types of visual is the cutout in a drawer for the item.
Both work well … If people put things back.
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Willing volunteers
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The Woodshop is balancing a couple of issues. 1. We don’t want to invest in efforts that won’t move to the new shop location. 2. We do have that on the project list and it is moving up the cue as we have other projects completed. 3 it will take a lot, a real lot of volunteering. I’ve got a couple folks that work making fixtures and jigs that have committed to participate when we start the effort. Stay tuned, more to come
It will be part of the reorganization of the Woodshop annex area. The whole area will be organized into shadow boards and storage and prep area’s for class and instructors materials.
Any personal storage particularly of supplies is being eliminated
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Episode: Sanding Belt
Remember a day or so ago I posted a picture of a new sanding installed.
During work day, I had to loan the space another one. Take a look
Burn rate for $8-10 belts is high. But not as expensive as hook and loop pads with no sand paper
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Is there one of these anywhere near the sander? It would help (a little) to keep the belts from loading up. It should be the first thing anyone does before using the sander. Cleaning sticks are like $10 each.
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Yup and nope
There are several of them in the general shop area. Are they close to the sanders? Sometimes yes sometimes no. The thing they won’t help with is people pressing so hard they shred belts.
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@jswilson64 Incapable of comprehending fine sarcasm? That really would actually be interesting.
@hon1nbo I’ve never seen a proper shadowboard for tools in MakerSpace. Drawer organization will always be a lost cause, but when hand tools are placed in a high visibility area and can be seen and labeled as missing, they tend to stick around undamaged for a much longer period of time.
Yellow is definitely the color of contrast that makes it possible.
More bandsaw joy
While you might not agree, I think this looks like fantastic kindling. Add enough heat, and it should make a nice little fire. I pulled about 5 or 6 inches of this debris out of the Laguna band saw all stuffed around the blade and held by the adjustable guard that moves up and down to cover the blade. There was a LOT of it and I had never seen stuff like this around bandsaws, so I asked, “Why is this built up in here and how did it get here?”
Here’s the answer I got.
First, it was possible that the blast gates were not opened, so this is another place that wood could build up.
Second, with a lot of hard use, the blade gets covered with resin, and performs like a very dull blade.
Yup, sure enough, a gunky blade. (Please note, this is not the same picture posted regarding cleaning blades with simple green and a 3M type scrungie. What a little simple green can do)
So rather than cut the wood, this blade starts shredding the wood, and stuffing some of it up the blade guard. If a maker didn’t clean it out, the next maker could unwittingly start a fire that could get sucked up the dust ducting if said maker did open blast gates. It appears that this gunk-causing-shredding seems to show up most often after trimming tree trunks and bowl blanks.
After pulling all the shreds out, I cleaned this blade (took about 20 minutes) and the blade beneath was sharp and performed as it should again. It wasn’t necessary to replace the blade for my project, as it was not worn, just really dirty. I have, however, seen these blades pulled off the band saw dirty, and sometimes bent in the process. Simple green won’t fix that. We have to throw it away, when a little scrunging was all it needed.
But it is disappointing when it takes an hour (or more) of repair, replacing, or cleaning before I can get my project underway. If I spend another half hour or so cleaning up/leaving space better than I found it, my work time seems way too short.
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Thank you for fixing it and for your explanation, @skeeter.
Would one of our expert turners consider teaching a class on how to properly prepare log blanks? I’ll start a separate thread.
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Would it be possible to have classes digitally recorded and uploaded to the website so that people who need refreshers can have that available? I understand that it isn’t like to solve (some or any) the problems mentioned in this thread, but for some people, it could be helpful and prevent some issues.
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Agree 100% that there should be a collection of videos to show proper use of tools + typical machine maintenance before / after cutting.
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