A Custom Dust Hood For My Planer

I'm slowly making my way around my shop and connecting my tools to a central dust collection system. Most recently, I tackled my planer. (No, it's not always this clean - I just figured it would make sense to clean it while was working on it  :))

The original dust hood that came with the planer looks like this. It transitions the rectangular opening on the planer to a 4" port on one side.For many, many years, I used a reducer to connect this to a shop vac. Although it got me through many projects, the suction power of my shop vac., combined with the abrupt 90 degree turn the chips had to take to exit the dust hood meant that only about 80% of the chips were collected. There always seemed to be some chips shooting out of the front of the machine. :(

I now have a 6" branch on my dust collection system running to the planer, so I designed a new dust hood that would transition from the rectangular opening on the planer to the 6" diameter of the branch. I started by relocating the circular opening so it pointed straight up instead of out to the side. I did this for several reasons, but mostly because it centrally located the port on the planer. I thought this would allow for much better chip collection vs. the original hood with collection off to one side.I aimed to keep the flow within the hood as smooth as possible while staying as compact as I could. Ultimately, I wanted to print this out on a 3D printer.

In the end the design was too large to be printed in one piece (at least on the printer I had access to at the time), so I split the design into two main pieces and printed them on a Sindoh 3DWOX1. I took care to design and orient the parts in such a way as to ensure the inner surfaces of the hood would be as smooth as possible.

I also printed a small plate to reinforce the slot I cut in half when printing. A screw is used here to attach the hood to the planer, so I wanted to be certain its shoulder had a nice bearing surface.

With all the parts printed, I could glue them together using good 'ole super glue! I also used blue painters tape and a clip as clamps while the glue set up.For good measure, and to ensure I didn't lose any suction in the branch, I covered the glue joint with a few pieces of metal duct tape.Finally, I attached the hood to the planer and then connected it to the branch using a short section of flex hose. This allows for the planer to be raised and lowered without issue.​​​​​​​