In an effort to keep the mess to a minimum i built a floor sweep connected to the DC system, no DC system is perfect and lots of dust and chips escapes and ends up on the floor. Sweeping this dust and disposing of it is time consuming, plus it’s unhealthy as minipulating all this dust gets some of it back on the air.

Here on this Youtube video you can see the construction.

 

homemade floor sweep

One of the problems was finding the right spot and shape of the sweep, so that it wouldn’t get in the way too much. I used one of the support poles in my shop as a support for the sweep.

homemade DC sweep

It hugs arond the pole and wastes little space. But this design can also be reversed and attached to a wall.

workshop DC

One of the problems is that the floor contains lots of stuff that isn’t good for you DC system, like screws, stones, metal etc… and initially i thought i would have needed to place magnets inside the sweep to catch metal, but testing showed that only things with a density close to wood can get sucked in. As you can see on the picture below all the heavier things remain on the floor and an inspection of the dust bags shows no sign of rocks or screws.

sweep

Below you can see some diagrams to help you rebuild the same or a similar unit. Mine is made out of 18mm plywood, and the DC pipe is 125mm in diameter. I calculated the mouth opening of the sweep to have the same surface as the DC pipe so that the airflow remains optimal. Construction time
is about 2-3 hours.

sweep plan 1

sweep plan 2

sweep plan 3