I watch a lot of YouTube maker videos. A whole lot. For many of them I keep thinking, if you bought a Glowforge, you could do that in a fraction of the time. Just get a Basic and your ability to rapidly prototype goes up exponentially.
Had an idea of what I needed to do, but wasn’t quite sure what I would be attaching too. Using the Glowforge to dial in tolerances is just amazing. Cardboard and a load of cheap .22mm acrylic I have works great.
It’s a dust moccasin because the EVA foam for the fringe skirt is tan and looks like tassels on a moccasin. I had thought of leather and then I saw this EVA sheet and boy does it work great.
I have a dust skirt on the Shopbot and never use it. I find that it has to sweep the material to allow the vacuum to do its thing. If it’s not in contact, I don’t get much cleaning with a 5hp Stanley vac. Many of the mills I use are longer than the dust skirt so it can’t contact the material.
I also like to see what my mill is doing so I can catch a problem before it’s costly or so I can keep track of progress. I can’t see through the dust skirt to do that.
But the Shopbot is inside an acrylic enclosure (which limits my pass-through capabilities) that keeps the sawdust contained. I just vacuum after lift the kid.
It’s a challenge to design within the limitations of z height and mill stick out. I think having the enclosure really is better. The dust shoes really do get in the way. And the skirt does need to sweep the material. But I did some MDF and it got all the air-born dust so it works as intended.
Having a clear side and skirt would make a difference in seeing what is going on. I don’t like it. Having a clear top does help, but I can’t really see from above.
I am getting ready to build dust good for my flat bed CNC. I have toying with the idea of bending a shape like yours out of 1/8 acrylic then glue on the top and trim the excess with a trim router as the sides would not as perfectly formed as a 3d printed one.
Like your Eva moccasin idea. How thick is it. Stuff enough to sort of brush or just a hanging curtain?
Hey, that’s a good idea. I can cut a form out with the Glowforge and bend the acrylic. Having it tranparent makes such a difference.
The EVA is 3mm, so pretty thin. Kind of hard to get a narrow kerf but make it all the way through. Still have settings to tweak. It’s just one row of fringe, not enough to push, but enough to contain and sweep.
That’s the type of bristle used on the Shopbot dust shoe. They’re pretty thick so if you’re using a canabilized door sweep, you might want to use a couple of rows of door sweep?
Eva foam is nice, but when it cuts, it shrinks. Hard to have a small kerf. Tweaking the length of the PLA side and lengthening the tassels. Hadn’t quite adjusted the depth of everything as attached to the router. Needed to add 10mm since it slides up high.
I also rearranged to holes to put the vac outlet on the side where the router’s shroud seems to send the dust.
Also made my touch plate. Used Brass stair gauge clamps that go on a framing square. Looks cool and works great at 20mm exact.
