It's a speed bump. The idea is to slow down someone before they have an accident, and also to prevent tripping over the cords for the table saw and dust collector.
I also added one of those nifty devices that, when you turn on the shop vac (dust collector), 2 seconds later the saw comes on, and when you turn it off, 15 seconds later the saw turns off--or vice versa if you install it correctly!
So I thought I was going to buy a $50 box from iVAC that you plug both the saw and vacuum into. However, when I looked into it, it turns out their original product wasn't meant to handle 1.75 HP (14 amp) saws or 1.5 HP (12 amp) vacuum cleaners. Seems there was originally some confusion on that point, both by the consumers and by the iVAC company itself, which led to several generations of improvements as well as discontinued models.
Today, the way to do it seems to be to use one of these clamp on, current detecting, transmitters.
Now me, and I'd say, most other EE's who understand clamp-on ammeters, would be skeptical that this device, which takes the wires with current going in both directions, would even work; which may be why it took so long for someone to invent it. Any way, the signal is transmitted by radio to this receiver box, which controls the vacuum cleaner.
For some reason, even though they insist I need this box for the 12 amp vacuum, and I know I can use that vacuum on a 15 amp circuit, and most 20 amp plugs these days are identical to 15 amp plugs anyway, they decided to use a special 20 amp plug--the type with a side-wise blade. But, for those of us who are already sucking 14 amps from the 20 amp circuit, we can plug the box into a 15 amp circuit using the included 20 amp female to 15 amp male pig-tail. I actually thought such a thing was illegal, but when I called iVAC about it they assured me that was a sick bird, and their pig-tail was merely unlawful. So I'm glad I cleared that up!
But anyway, about $150 later (not counting the speed bump) and it all seems to work as advertised.
I used a 12 amp shop vac with 2 1/4" hose for dust collection because, after a year grabbing shop vacs at thrift stores and flea markets, this was the biggest one we have. I bought a 4 inch to 2 1/4 inch adapter from Amazon, but the 2 1/4 inch side made a loose fit, so I epoxied them permanently together using some left-over resin from a tear-drop related improvement.
I like the idea of using dedicated shop vacs over the idea of a central dust handling system because it's less expensive and less inconvenient then buying and having large hoses all over the place. Eventually, I'll probably install some more magic switches for the band saw and miter saw. With smaller vacs (the band saw and mitre saw produce less dust than the table saw) I should be able to get away with the original $50 iVAC box.
Tom
Who knew??
making it harder to get into the mini van conversion.
)
