I've been off the Forum for numerous months due to some health problems. I have a basement shop with no fresh air outlet. (It's in the back deepest part of the basement and my In-Laws apartment is in the front part of the basement that opens to the outside.) My basement walls are 8 to 10 feet underground so venting through a wall is a non-starter. I have a large 3HP Delta "dust collector" that sucks up the prodigious amounts of sawdust from my tablesaw, planer, and jointer without problems. I also have a Ringneck Blues DC on my Carvewright hooked up to the Delta that I thought was taking care of that dust also. In addition to this Delta dust collector connected to individual machines, I have a JET 1000 CFM air scrubber supposedly good for cleaning down to .5 microns. This system was getting all of the big stuff that you can see. My shop remained clean to the eye.

But as I said, late last year I started to have some medical problems. Specifically, some serious breathing problems. For a guy who has never smoked I was wheezing like I had a lifetime 3-pack a day habit. I saw a bunch of doctors and did a bunch of research and found among others a website that specifically addresses the ultra-fine particulate matter that is created in woodshops - Bill Pentz website: http://www.billpentz.com/ (some scary reading when you suddenly can't breathe.) Basically all the equipment I have doesn't filter out the sub-microscopic ultra-fine sized particles that are comparatively the size of smoke particles. I'm talkin' reeeeeealy tiny here. Since they are so tiny they just blow through filters and the Brownian motion of even still air molecules keeps them in the air so they never settle out on surfaces. They just float around until you have a chance to breathe them. Cough, cough.

As it turns out my problem is more of an allergic response to these particles rather than any sort of lung tissue scarring disease that would be permanent. So all I had to do was stop working in the basement - especially my Carvewright which produces the plenty of ultra fine particulate when cutting Corian and PVC lithopanes of which I was doing a lot of at the last.

The solution of course is to move my machine into an area that can be completely ventilated on a regular basis with a full exchange of air and thereby get rid of the sub-microscopic but toxically breathable particulate. So, I will be moving my Carvewright to my garage. Unfortunately like most guys my age I have collected enough "stuff" to fill my garage so space is already at a premium. So I all this stuff I've written is only a preface to my question to you guys on the forum:

What kind of physically small size dust collector can I use to suck out the major dust/chips while the machine is operating? By this I mean something like a Fein shop vac, but how to connect it to the Carvewright? I'm not talking about the sub-microscopic stuff but the visible crud that will muck up the working of the trucks, sensors, and belts.

Some thoughts:
1. The Ringneck Blues adapter has a 4" outflow - waaaaay too big for a shop vac. I don't think necking it down will ensure enough vacuum from a 2" hose.
2. A couple years ago I made one of the Bergund's small dust pickups that bolts near the base of the Z-truck but you have to take off the flip-out bit checker and permanently install a lucite piece in its place. I never did get it to work.

I'm looking for help from anyone out there. I really miss carving on my machine and until I get this solved, nothing's gonna happen.

Thanks,
200k