**Building a Dust Collection System**

It was just a matter of connecting all the flexible tube directly to the tools after that, the whole system was ready to go. If you stopped right here, you would have a perfectly workable and simple dust collection system. I did add a floor sweep on this just to be able to clean up the floor a little bit easier for the automation part of this project.

There are basically three big components that I'm going to walk you through, those really quickly and how they work together. First is the power this is where the tool is plugged in and then gets plugged into the wall here when you turn the tool on and sends a signal out through this wire to the brain. The brain is an Arduino Uno with the shield on top of it and takes all of the input and then decides on how to handle the output.

Part of that output is turning on and off this 30 amp relay which is going to be controlling the dust collector. Another output is the blast gate and it's really just controlling a servo which turns this arm. This arm opens and closes the blast gate.

**The Brain of the Operation**

This is made up of three components, a receptacle, a plug, and a voltage sensor all rated for 15 amps only. Essentially, this is just a receptacle wired directly to a plug but I've cut into the live wire and put it into this sensor. The sensor detects a voltage drop when you turn on or off a tool and then sends out a signal based on that through these wires.

There's an Arduino Uno with the servo shield on top of it that can drive up to 16 servos. It's got its own power source as well. I've got everything plugged into a breadboard here for prototyping but eventually, all of these wires will go on to the shield.

**The Dust Collector**

This is a 30 amp relay it gets a control signal from the board which tells it whether to turn on or off whatever's plugged in here, which in my case will be the desk collector. All the black skates have a servo and each one of those servos is plugged in right here.

**The Blast Gates**

Let's talk about the blast gates. Here's the setup for the blast gates on the laser. We made a bracket that fits on top of here and it holds this servo. This is a high torque RC servo, and on top of that we mounted an acrylic arm that we also cut on the laser. It captures this bolt which is screwed into the gate and as we change the rotation of the servo with code, it opens and closes the gate.

**The Acrylic Case**

I wanted to make a really simple acrylic case to hold the Arduino and the shield so it didn't get covered in dust. I used a website called maker case com to make a really simple finger jointed box and just added in my logo to it since this was acrylic, I had to use acrylic cement to glue it together into a box.

Then we glued it on some magnets and some washers to lock the case and the Arduino up onto the ceiling plate. Then we ran all the wires inside the box and hot glued them onto the terminals so they wouldn't be pulled out from gravity or just from tools moving around.

**Programming**

Right now, we're just trying to figure out the timing to get all of the tools testing their voltage in order to make sure that we're not taking too long in any of them. It's just a lot of code manipulation at this point but we're really close.

After a couple of weeks of working on it, we finally got all the tools hooked up and working. The table saw, the band saw, and the miter saw are all in good shape. The one thing that's not really working so well is the relay for the dust collector. This relay that I showed you earlier is a little bit underpowered for the two horsepower dust collector and it doesn't work consistently.

I've ordered some beefier components and they're on their way now, so once I get them and I'm able to test them out if they work, I'll link them down in the description. Also, down there is a list of all the components that I use for this and a link to the code that I wrote to make the system work.

Feel free to take that code look through it mess with it use it whatever you want. I hope you like this project, I'd love to hear what you think about it down in the comments, and if you want to see some other types of projects, I've got lots and lots of other stuff. If you're new to the channel don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell down there so you get notified as soon as I upload.

That's it for this guys, thanks for watching we'll see you next time

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey I'm Bob it I like to make stuff today I'm going to use an Arduino to fully automate my desk collection now that the woodworking side of the shop is all set up I've got the tools where I want them but they're not near each other and they're not near the dust collector so I'm gonna make a dust collection system to collect all the sawdust in one place in my old shop I made a dust collection system that ran off with shop vac and I controlled all of the blast gates with a keypad in an Arduino I want to do something really similar to that here but instead of the keypad I want it to all be automatic first we got to put up the pipes I went to the store to get some PVC and instead someone told me about this PVC sewer pipe it's basically the same material it's just thinner and way way cheaper since this doesn't need to hold pressure this stuff will work really well and cost a lot less since I'm using off-the-shelf components we had to 3d print some adapter rings to fit between the metal blast gates the PVC pipe and the plastic adapters each pair of these needed a different adapter to hold them together and most of them were snug enough that we didn't have to glue them I measured out the different lengths of pipe that I needed and then cut them down with a circular saw and finished those cuts with a jig saw it does start to pinch as you get closer to the end of the cut and since the inlet to the dust collector is about a foot off the ground I made a simple stand out of some two-by-four scraps to hold my pipe at the right height I use the plastic pipe strapping to hold these in place it's just the same as the metal stuff that you see in plumbing stores this is just a little bit easier to deal with this is just the main trunk that comes off of the dust collector and since I've got a concrete wall I couldn't very easily strap this to the wall so I made this little stand just to hold it in place and then where the end of it met the back of my miter saw station I added some more strapping there to hold it in place all of the connectors from this rigid tube down to the tools are made of flexible hose this gives you some more flexibility as far as the placement of your tools and the stuff is really easy to cut with a knife and a wire cutter using four inch hose clamps makes it really easy to attach these to just about any size pipe to to hang the long pieces on the ceiling I started by making a loop right in the middle of the span that I needed I fed the long pipe through this so that it could be held in place while I got it level using a strap on the end when you're making a desk election system like this you don't want any sharp corners within the pipes it cuts down the speed of the air and makes it less efficient I used a sweeping 90 degree elbow so that it makes that turn over a longer distance another option is to get two 45-degree angle pieces and then add a straight section in between them I got the pipe on the ceiling first and didn't glue in the angles yet so that I could adjust them to match where the tools were below after cutting the sections of the pipes to drop down to the tools I used some PVC cement to glue them into the 90 degree angles these weren't glued to the upper pipe though so that I could still change the angle as they dropped I had to use a coupler to get the pieces to fit together and at a why so that I could split it to both the bandsaw and the table saw I've got most of the pipe run now but one of the concerns about using plastic pipe for dust collection is potential static build-up within the pipe and when that's combined with sawdust you might have an explosion the way around that is to discharge the static into the ground wire of the electrical system of the house and in my case that's right there it's pretty handy so all I have to do is run a copper wire from my system up into that wire should be good to go you don't necessarily have to twist this wire but it certainly doesn't hurt I screwed the middle of it to a table and chucked up the two ends in my drill just by running the drill you get a nice twisted wire using that loop at the end I added a screw and screwed it right into the side of my pipe making sure that the tip of the screw penetrated through the wall with all the rigid pipe run it was just a matter of connecting all the flexible tube directly to the tools after that the whole system was ready to go and if you stopped right here you would have a perfectly workable and simple dust collection system I did add a floor sweep on this just to be able to clean up the floor a little bit easier for the automation part of this project there's basically three big components I'm gonna walk you through those really quickly and how they work together first is the power this is where the tool is plugged in and then gets plugged into the wall here when you turn the tool on and sends a signal out through this wire to the brain the brain is an Arduino Uno with the shield on top of it and takes all of the input and then decides on how to handle the output part of that output is turning on and off this 30 amp relay which is going to be controlling the dust collector another output is the blast gate and it's really just controlling a servo which turns this arm this arm opens and closes the blast gate now let's talk about each one of these this is made up of three components a receptacle a plug and a voltage sensor all rated for 15 amps only essentially this is just a receptacle wired directly to a plug but I've cut into the live wire and put it into this sensor the sensor detects a voltage drop when you turn on or off a tool and then sends out a signal based on that through these wires and this is the brain of the whole thing there's an Arduino Uno with the servo shield on top of it that can drive up to 16 servos it's got its own power source as well I've got everything plugged into a breadboard here for prototyping but eventually all of these wires will go on to the shield this is a 30 amp relay it gets a control signal from the board which tells it whether to turn on or off whatever's plugged in here which in my case will be the desk collector all the black skates have a servo and each one of those servos is plugged in right here so let's talk about the blast gates here's the set up for the blast gates on the laser we made a bracket that fits on top of here and it holds this servo this is a high torque RC servo and on top of that we mounted an acrylic arm that we also cut on the laser it captures this bolt which is screwed into the gate and as we change the rotation of the servo with code it opens and closes the gate there's really not a whole lot to the system but now we have to make five more of these and three more of these montage time I wanted to make a really simple acrylic case to hold the Arduino and the shield so it didn't get covered in dust I used a website called maker case comm to make a really simple finger jointed box and just added in my logo to it since this was acrylic I had to use acrylic cement to glue it together into a box and then screwed it to the ceiling we also glue it on some magnets and some washers to lock the case and the Arduino up onto the ceiling plate then we ran all the wires inside the box and hot glued them onto the terminals so they wouldn't be pulled out from gravity or just from tools moving around it wasn't pretty but it all fit in the box then it was time to program right now we're just trying to figure out the timing to get all of the tools testing their voltage in order to make sure that we're not taking too long in any of them it's just a lot of code manipulation at this point but we're really close after a couple of weeks of working on it we finally got all the tools hooked up and working the table saw the band saw and the miter saw are all in good shape the one thing that's not really working so well is the relay for the dust collector this relay that I showed you earlier is a little bit underpowered for the two horsepower dust collector and it doesn't work consistently I've ordered some beefier components and they're on their way now so once I get them and I'm able to test them out if they work I'll link them down in the description also down there is a list of all the components that I use for this and a link to the code that I wrote to make the system work feel free to take that code look through it mess with it use it whatever you want I hope you like this project I'd love to hear what you think about it down in the comments and if you want to see some other types of projects I've got lots and lots of other stuff if you're new to the channel don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell down there so you get notified as soon as I upload that's it for this and guys thanks for watching we'll see you next timehey I'm Bob it I like to make stuff today I'm going to use an Arduino to fully automate my desk collection now that the woodworking side of the shop is all set up I've got the tools where I want them but they're not near each other and they're not near the dust collector so I'm gonna make a dust collection system to collect all the sawdust in one place in my old shop I made a dust collection system that ran off with shop vac and I controlled all of the blast gates with a keypad in an Arduino I want to do something really similar to that here but instead of the keypad I want it to all be automatic first we got to put up the pipes I went to the store to get some PVC and instead someone told me about this PVC sewer pipe it's basically the same material it's just thinner and way way cheaper since this doesn't need to hold pressure this stuff will work really well and cost a lot less since I'm using off-the-shelf components we had to 3d print some adapter rings to fit between the metal blast gates the PVC pipe and the plastic adapters each pair of these needed a different adapter to hold them together and most of them were snug enough that we didn't have to glue them I measured out the different lengths of pipe that I needed and then cut them down with a circular saw and finished those cuts with a jig saw it does start to pinch as you get closer to the end of the cut and since the inlet to the dust collector is about a foot off the ground I made a simple stand out of some two-by-four scraps to hold my pipe at the right height I use the plastic pipe strapping to hold these in place it's just the same as the metal stuff that you see in plumbing stores this is just a little bit easier to deal with this is just the main trunk that comes off of the dust collector and since I've got a concrete wall I couldn't very easily strap this to the wall so I made this little stand just to hold it in place and then where the end of it met the back of my miter saw station I added some more strapping there to hold it in place all of the connectors from this rigid tube down to the tools are made of flexible hose this gives you some more flexibility as far as the placement of your tools and the stuff is really easy to cut with a knife and a wire cutter using four inch hose clamps makes it really easy to attach these to just about any size pipe to to hang the long pieces on the ceiling I started by making a loop right in the middle of the span that I needed I fed the long pipe through this so that it could be held in place while I got it level using a strap on the end when you're making a desk election system like this you don't want any sharp corners within the pipes it cuts down the speed of the air and makes it less efficient I used a sweeping 90 degree elbow so that it makes that turn over a longer distance another option is to get two 45-degree angle pieces and then add a straight section in between them I got the pipe on the ceiling first and didn't glue in the angles yet so that I could adjust them to match where the tools were below after cutting the sections of the pipes to drop down to the tools I used some PVC cement to glue them into the 90 degree angles these weren't glued to the upper pipe though so that I could still change the angle as they dropped I had to use a coupler to get the pieces to fit together and at a why so that I could split it to both the bandsaw and the table saw I've got most of the pipe run now but one of the concerns about using plastic pipe for dust collection is potential static build-up within the pipe and when that's combined with sawdust you might have an explosion the way around that is to discharge the static into the ground wire of the electrical system of the house and in my case that's right there it's pretty handy so all I have to do is run a copper wire from my system up into that wire should be good to go you don't necessarily have to twist this wire but it certainly doesn't hurt I screwed the middle of it to a table and chucked up the two ends in my drill just by running the drill you get a nice twisted wire using that loop at the end I added a screw and screwed it right into the side of my pipe making sure that the tip of the screw penetrated through the wall with all the rigid pipe run it was just a matter of connecting all the flexible tube directly to the tools after that the whole system was ready to go and if you stopped right here you would have a perfectly workable and simple dust collection system I did add a floor sweep on this just to be able to clean up the floor a little bit easier for the automation part of this project there's basically three big components I'm gonna walk you through those really quickly and how they work together first is the power this is where the tool is plugged in and then gets plugged into the wall here when you turn the tool on and sends a signal out through this wire to the brain the brain is an Arduino Uno with the shield on top of it and takes all of the input and then decides on how to handle the output part of that output is turning on and off this 30 amp relay which is going to be controlling the dust collector another output is the blast gate and it's really just controlling a servo which turns this arm this arm opens and closes the blast gate now let's talk about each one of these this is made up of three components a receptacle a plug and a voltage sensor all rated for 15 amps only essentially this is just a receptacle wired directly to a plug but I've cut into the live wire and put it into this sensor the sensor detects a voltage drop when you turn on or off a tool and then sends out a signal based on that through these wires and this is the brain of the whole thing there's an Arduino Uno with the servo shield on top of it that can drive up to 16 servos it's got its own power source as well I've got everything plugged into a breadboard here for prototyping but eventually all of these wires will go on to the shield this is a 30 amp relay it gets a control signal from the board which tells it whether to turn on or off whatever's plugged in here which in my case will be the desk collector all the black skates have a servo and each one of those servos is plugged in right here so let's talk about the blast gates here's the set up for the blast gates on the laser we made a bracket that fits on top of here and it holds this servo this is a high torque RC servo and on top of that we mounted an acrylic arm that we also cut on the laser it captures this bolt which is screwed into the gate and as we change the rotation of the servo with code it opens and closes the gate there's really not a whole lot to the system but now we have to make five more of these and three more of these montage time I wanted to make a really simple acrylic case to hold the Arduino and the shield so it didn't get covered in dust I used a website called maker case comm to make a really simple finger jointed box and just added in my logo to it since this was acrylic I had to use acrylic cement to glue it together into a box and then screwed it to the ceiling we also glue it on some magnets and some washers to lock the case and the Arduino up onto the ceiling plate then we ran all the wires inside the box and hot glued them onto the terminals so they wouldn't be pulled out from gravity or just from tools moving around it wasn't pretty but it all fit in the box then it was time to program right now we're just trying to figure out the timing to get all of the tools testing their voltage in order to make sure that we're not taking too long in any of them it's just a lot of code manipulation at this point but we're really close after a couple of weeks of working on it we finally got all the tools hooked up and working the table saw the band saw and the miter saw are all in good shape the one thing that's not really working so well is the relay for the dust collector this relay that I showed you earlier is a little bit underpowered for the two horsepower dust collector and it doesn't work consistently I've ordered some beefier components and they're on their way now so once I get them and I'm able to test them out if they work I'll link them down in the description also down there is a list of all the components that I use for this and a link to the code that I wrote to make the system work feel free to take that code look through it mess with it use it whatever you want I hope you like this project I'd love to hear what you think about it down in the comments and if you want to see some other types of projects I've got lots and lots of other stuff if you're new to the channel don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell down there so you get notified as soon as I upload that's it for this and guys thanks for watching we'll see you next time\n"