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Bridgeport mounted shop vac

matt_isserstedt

Diamond
Joined
Dec 15, 2003
Location
suburbs of Ann Arbor, MI, USA
This is not that novel but worked out better than I could have imagined.

Just a brainstorm from trying to clean up "Stuff" I've abandoned here and there over the last 5-10 years.

I had this 1 gallon shop vac stashed in a corner. Its useful but is so damn tippy, it needs a counterweight so its not always on its side.

But I went 1 more step and mounted it right to the shaper-ram of the Bridgeport. I already had the 5/8-11 post for the DRO arm, so I just machined a slip collar that welds to an arm + sheetmetal bracket to engage the sides of the mini vac. Hammer, fit, file, weld, bend, file...

While you can see my mill table is a giant pile of ferrous debris, the little vac is speficially for cleaning the vise between parts. Saves a lot of time going to find the vac in one of 3 rooms, carrying it thru, finding spare power plug. This is right there, flip switch and grab hose = very fast. Dedicated 120vac power is overhead in my case. After a couple of parts I was like, wow, why didn't I do this sooner...?!?

Hope all are healthy and safe out there!





 
Those chips look way too big for a vac with a hose that small. I think if it was me I would be unclogging the hose every 30 seconds no matter how slow I went.
 
I put a dedicated larger shop-vac out of the way on the floor behind the bpt, with one of the foot-button on/of extension cords up on the side of the machine so I easily grab the hose and hit the button. Sure do like to vacuum the table and vise instead of using compressed air, stirring the fines with a disposable paint brush while applying vacuum cleans down in the t-slots pretty quickly too. Cleanup after each op makes the machine faster to clean when finished.
 
Good point about the long strings. I don't point it at those. Only the little schizz that falls in the vise and obstructs parallels for the next setup.

This mill doesn't have the woodstove door. My old one had it though. I could holesaw thru the column to pass the hose thru.

I can barely hear the phase perfect run any more. My Dad can't hear it ~at all~. The volume isn't a major customer dissatisfier ;)
 
Good point about the long strings. I don't point it at those. Only the little schizz that falls in the vise and obstructs parallels for the next setup.

This mill doesn't have the woodstove door. My old one had it though. I could holesaw thru the column to pass the hose thru.

I can barely hear the phase perfect run any more. My Dad can't hear it ~at all~. The volume isn't a major customer dissatisfier ;)

Ooh, ooh, Ooh....Put it behind on the floor (or strapped to the base, just off the floor so you can still sweep under it), 2" pvc straight up to the ram (less friction resistance) clamp there, and thence on to flex hose.

I like the foot pedal switch too.
 
That is a great idea. Thanks for posting it.

I have long believed in having dedicated tools at each major machine in my shop. Wrenches, chuck keys (of course), edge finders, soft hammers, anything that I constantly use there. Saves a lot of time searching for things. I even color code them with electrical tape so I if I find it somewhere else, I know where it belongs. But I never thought of doing that with a shop vac. The price of small shop vacs today is comparable with that of other tools that I have purchased for this use. Even penny pinching me could buy several of them for different machines.

And I like the mounting position too. With a crowded shop, that makes a lot of sense.
 
That is a great idea. Thanks for posting it.

I have long believed in having dedicated tools at each major machine in my shop. Wrenches, chuck keys (of course), edge finders, soft hammers, anything that I constantly use there. Saves a lot of time searching for things. I even color code them with electrical tape so I if I find it somewhere else, I know where it belongs. But I never thought of doing that with a shop vac. The price of small shop vacs today is comparable with that of other tools that I have purchased for this use. Even penny pinching me could buy several of them for different machines.

And I like the mounting position too. With a crowded shop, that makes a lot of sense.

Yup, and Shop-vac makes a $25 "Bucket Vac" that you place on your own 5 gallon bucket.
 
I mounted a Greenlee Vac designed for pulling strings through pipes on a 55 gallon clamping lid with a pipe in the top and a drum with wheels. Double stacked filter so you get more suction yet. We put a 55 gallon plastic bag in the drum and when it is full you take the vac cover off and tie off the bag before you pull it. I also took a 30 gallon paperboard drum with a hole in the bottom sightly larger than the blower motor cooling intake. I lined it with 2" sound absorbing foam from McMaster and now we have a vacuum that sucks like crazy yet is quiet and holds a ton of chips. A drain snake is handy too when you do something stupid with long chips.
 
I like the idea! My only question is how hard is it to dump out? I think I would have to mount it low behind machine and snake hose up to table area. Just my problem with reaching up high and handling things.
 
Accumulated chips and dust and oil start to make the hose on my vac heavy- and the intake will drip, so I mounted a hook to suspend it over a trashcan. I've toyed with an idea I saw in the old HSM magazine IIRC; combine a coolant sump and baffle with the vacuum unit, so coolant and chips are sucked away together, separate and recycle the coolant. Sounds fun and noisy and like it would need a lot of fiddling so I've made do with various strategies to coax coolant into the drains.

Had some fun tonite, was drilling with flood and didn't break the chips fast enough so got showered in the spray when a long one came out and wrapped lol..
 
And add a Oneida Air System Dust Deputy cyclone which will separate 99 percent of the debris out before it gets to your vac. It keeps your filter clean. As most of you know, I work for OAS.
 
And add a Oneida Air System Dust Deputy cyclone which will separate 99 percent of the debris out before it gets to your vac. It keeps your filter clean. As most of you know, I work for OAS.

Better yet John, as the Bridgeport (and it's clones) number in the millions, you could offer a special kit, with some of the features we've described here.

Including:
1. a solid pipe up the back/side (with hose outlet) positional under or over the head/ram.
2. correct bracket to mount the shop vac head, allowing the bucket to be dropped away for cleaning.
3. and that foot switch.

Your welcome.
 
I use a 5 gal vac with one of those orange bucket topper filters from home depot. It works great though 2 buckets side by side takes up a lot of room. Way easier to empty and vac never gets clogged

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 








 
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