I do admit to being jealous of those guys, but some of my machines are out in the middle of the shop and I don't want pipes running all over the ceiling and hanging down.
Maybe I am a bit too lazy to go to all that work???
Here's the "main feature" of the system, the Overhead Pivoting 4 inch flexible hose.
This hose allows me to easily connect to either the table saw, the planer's cyclone seprator or to the 6 inch jointer It is even long enough to reach my wood lathe, which is over on the opposite side of the shop.
Here's my "Octopus" of 4 inch pipes leaving the dust collector. Note the many gate valves. Most of the time I only use two of them.
I have two tubes sucking dust from the radial arm saw. One 2 1/2 inch line is attached to the saw's shroud.
But to catch the sawdust from the back side of the saw (where most of the dust goes anyway, I installed a simple metal box to catch the dust. It is attached to another 2 1/2 inch line, too, and it does a pretty good job for crosscuts, at least.
Here you can see the connections and valving to connect to the radial arm saw's blade guard and to the small jointer (which is off to the left of the picture.
You can also see, just in back of the saw's guard, the 5 inch by 10 inch metal box that collects dust from the saw blade. A 2 1/2" flexible hose connects to its lower right corner.
And yes, I know that its all sorta messy, but it really works well for me.
My 4 inch jointer doesn't get a whole lot of use, but I hooked it up with a 2 1/2 inch hose anyway, as you can see here.
Overhead 4 inch hose Connected to the table saw:
Overhead 4 inch hose now Connected to my 6 inch Jointer:
The long hose connected to the planer's cyclone separator.
