Dust Shoe Clogs?

Hi all, Just received a new Adventure Edition and I'm trying my first cuts. I'm experiencing some dust collection problems and I wonder if anyone has experience that may help. I have a small shop vac connected directly to the vacuum port. I'm doing 3d cuts over the whole cut area and producing a lot of dust. I'm noticing that after a few minutes of cutting, my shop vac sounds strained and it no longer appears to be picking up dust from the dust shoe. When I disconnect the shop vac from the hose port, the sound returns to normal and the vacuum host inside the Handibot slacks a bit. I still have suction from the shop vac and am able to manually clean up dust for the duration of the job.

The first time this happened, when I examined the shoe afterward, several of the bristles in the shoe were bent toward the hose port, and there was a mass of dust clogging the port. I bent the bristles back before running more jobs and reset the bit lower in the router so that the bristles bend less during a cut. Since then I'm still experience the loss of suction (and resorting to removing the shop vac and move it around manually), but I haven't found more material clogging the host at the end of my job. Any thoughts about what might be happening? Could I still be sucking bristles into the hose port? Thanks!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2016 06:24PM by _Kyle.

Kyle,

I've experienced this occasionally when I've been using a really powerful shop vac...but it sounds like you've got a small one connected which shouldn't cause problems. One thing to try would be to insert the grey tube further into the dust foot. The wire that supports the tube coils in a way that you can "screw" it into the dust foot. It actually turns the opposite direction from a normal screw so you'll want to twist it counterclockwise.

Thanks for the quick response. Just moved the hose further into the shoe and tried a weaker shop vac I happen to have. Things ran longer, but I got a clog late in the job. Looking at it, I think this material is the real problem. I have an image, but file attachments seem to be broken. The clog is made up of a lot of long, stringy bits.

My best guess is the material and type of cut.

You say you are 3d routing - are you getting a lot of strings or is it coming off as dust and small chips? When this happens for me it is usually a material that cuts 'stringy' and it gets clogged pretty much where you mention.