I was checking Lee Valley’s site, to see if there were any new tools of interest, and came across a steel plate adapter for their T-slot mini worksurface. There, they show a square dust chute mounted to the stainless steel mounting plate.
Hmm, a magnetic-bottomed dust chute? It caught my interest and so I dug in a little deeper.
I’m not sure when it first came out, but Veritas offers a magnetic dust chute that works with 2-1/2″ vacuum hoses, and it comes with a 2-1/2″ to 1-1/4″ adapter so you can use it with smaller vacs. You should be able to attach standard adapters if you want to use other hose sizes, such as 4″ for use with a dust collector.
The dust chute has a 3″ x 3″ square opening, which I think should be enough for gobbling up chips and sawdust created by benchtop tools. It looks like it’s meant for use with unshrouded tools.
The bottom of the dust chute has 4 rare earth magnets, capable of delivering 40 pounds of holding force.
You can use it on a drill press table, lathe, scroll saw, or any other tool that has steel tables or surfaces.
The instructions also say that you could install 2 (or 4?) steel flat head screws into a wooden-topped workbench, as long as they’re placed to match the spacing of the magnets. Or I suppose you could embed a steel plate in your benchtop, although a few screws here and there, if you want to be able to move the chute around easily, will look a lot cleaner.
This seems like a handy and moveable way to bring dust collection to tools that don’t have any.
Price: $34.50
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Lee Valley has another of their Free Shipping promos going on right now, on $40+ orders in the contiguous USA and Canada, good thru 8/30/2016.