Table saw guard

I take no credit for this Idea but I sure love the Instructables web site.
A couple years ago I nearly set my garage on fire ripping old escalator handrail in half for the local rowing club. We bolt it to the boat racks. It’s relatively gentle on the boats and lasts a long time. I had a shop vac hooked up to remove the dust but with the rubber dust and sparks from the wire reinforcement I should have seen fire was inevitable.
Since then (being the cheap guy I am) I haven’t had a guard or kickback protection. This Instructable will fix that and looks like it’s made for use on the Glowforge!

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That’s a good find. Instructables are great, aren’t they? - Rich

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I stopped following instructables links because of the splash screen harassment for my E-mail on every page.

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Free info is nice, but everyone has to figure out how to make money from their free internet content. - Rich

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Polycarbonate might be a better choice than acrylic. Acrylic is pretty brittle and can break into sharp shards, making for some not very friendly shrapnel.

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Except not for laser cutting. It sucks up laser light, discolors, warps and has a tendency to catch fire.

Other than that, it’d be perfect :slight_smile:

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Yes, acrylic is a bad choice for machine guards. There are many grades of polycarbonate, some are fire retardant. Probably none cut very well in a laser. They very often heated and vacuum formed or blow molded. Some things look like a laser project, but may not be well suited for one. As always, I may be completely wrong (you get what you pay for). :slight_smile: - Rich

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Hadn’t thought about it till now, but I wonder how many fails I will experience.
“Never should have tried that in a laser…”

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Failure is okay, because we learn from it. I think you said that in a post sometime. About learning from others, that’s good too, but sometimes their experience is wrong. - Rich

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perhaps failure in this case is something I’ll avoid. Maybe the gaurd with out anti-kickback would be a better Idea…

I was talking about material to use, not whether it was needed or not. :scream: - Rich