jsburger wroteEd, I am not sure why you would expect the Shark Guard to make a difference in under table dust collection. Without upper guard dust collection I get saw dust all over the top of the table. Some of it probably falls down to accumulate under the table and on the floor. It comes from the back side of the blade turning up. I don't use my SS Shark Guard much any more because I have a Powermatic table saw. I have a Shark Guard on it and I can tell you it makes a big difference on the amount of saw dust on the top of the table Vs the stock non dust collector OEM upper blade guard. I do notice the same thing with the SS Shark guard however.
I suspect your problem is inadequate dust collection. Read any article on dust collection and it is all about air flow. Vacuums are all about suction not air flow. As such they don't work very well as dust collectors.
I used the Shark guard on the SS with a 1200CFM JDS dust collector when I was working out of my garage. I worked very well and made a big difference IMO. Now I have a dedicated shop with a Clearvue Max at almost 2000CFM and the results are even better. I use the SS saw mode mostly for cross cuts now days with an unmodified lower saw guard and the Clearview and get very little saw dust on the floor even with out the upper saw guard.
I'm not sure what to tell you. The videos are ALL from the table top perspective and none are from below. Since then some of the posts address the below aspects but those are just how discussions go. If you watch the videos you will see that they are all about how much sawdust is not be captured and is flying out.
Now I do know a fair amount about dust collection and I think that the majority of shopsmith users have either a shop vac or shopsmith dust collector. The one shopvac I have is actually rated better then the shopsmith one so this is pretty much what most people can expect given the equipment.
Now as an example of how the cfm vs suction works all I have to do is look at my Festool vac. The dust collection system is the best I have seen and no it is not a high cfm machine. So one needs to question the need for that.
Now in my situation I work most of the time outside so I don't have the same situation as others who have a shop to work in. I don't worry about the fine dust as I wear a dusk mask and the wind takes care of the fine dust about as well as anything. It is rare that I use my high cfm dust collector, more effort and no big advantages for me. I don't recall the actual numbers but it will be in the 1200-1500 range. I will try it when I can work it in but I really don't expect to see a major change due to the higher cfm but I could be wrong.
But since you already have a setup to test with perhaps you could help us out by duplicating the videos I did. I would specially like to see the view to the rear where I'm seeing little to no improvement. I don't care about dust collection on the table but what is escaping. If you are saying you see little escaping then it should be obvious in a video. The wood I was ripping was 3 feet long and I think the rest of the information has already been given.
I have no plans to ever have a larger dust collector then I have and I really don't want to have to deal with hooking that up every time I want to do some sawing so if it doesn't work with a shopvac then it doesn't work for me.
Ed
