CNC dust collection

Installing a flexible hose for dust collection with CNC machinery. March 14, 2001

Q.
My dust collection system consists entirely of rigid pipe. Now I'm planning on getting CNC equipment. What should I be aware of regarding the flex hose for CNC equipment?

Forum Responses
The flex hose recommended consists of a 30-mil urethane that is wire-reinforced. This urethane material has a high tear strength, and abrasion resistance to handle the chip collection required for such woodworking machines. The flex hose handles particleboard applications very effectively. It is also flexible enough to handle the stress of traversing back and forth on the moving equipment. For even more stressful, abrasive conditions, you can request a 45-mil urethane flex hose. It is not quite as flexible as the 30-mil material, but is considerably more durable. Applications for sawdust trailer loading, and leaf collection/street sweeping are its common practice.

Curt Corum, forum technical advisor

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Our dust collection system is 8" rigid metal pipe and we use a CNC router that has a moving gantry. To prevent the dust collection hose from causing problems, we installed a stanley barn door track system to the ceiling and use a separate trolley with a couple of screen door springs attached to the 4" dust collection hose to keep it up out of the way. This same track is also used for our vacuum lift to load heavy material onto the table. We bought our track and trollies from Grainger and it was a very cheap solution to our problem.