If you’re sensitive to sawdust and want to keep your shop clean, you should reduce the amount of sawdust your router produces. It is also important to clean up your sawdust as it is one of the main risks to starting a fire in your workshop. There’s a number of optional accessories that will fit your router or attach to your router table and will help it throw less of unnecessary particles around.
An efficient way to limit sawdust output is to collect it right at the source.
There is no flawless solution for sucking up sawdust, but the manufacturers are trying hard. Plunge routers will do a better job at limiting sawdust output than fixed-base routers.
Depending on the kind of work you’re doing, the router will shoot up sawdust horizontally or vertically. That’s why we need a solid collection system that will suck out the sawdust both from under the router and from its sides.
A built-in collection system that some routers have is very convenient. You just plug in the nozzle and it does all the work. This system will be only present or higher models of bigger routers.
Your other option is buying a removable accessory baseplate that connects to a nozzle and will filter all the sawdust your router is producing. These come in different shapes and sizes. There a different accessory for every model of the router so you have to pay attention to that.
There is a bunch of use cases for sawdust in case you don’t want to just throw it away; What to do with sawdust?.
Dedicated dust collection
Many woodworkers lack a central dust collection system. Every time they want to collect sawdust, they have to haul their workshop vacuum between tools.
This is a huge hassle with a chow saw, cause you often only need it for a couple of minutes at a time.
How can you solve this problem?
You can buy a cheap extra vacuum and put it permanently under the chop saw bench. Buy a tool-actuated switch so that the vacuum turns on automatically when you start the saw.
It’s not the most professional system, but it’s good enough for me.
This blog Sawdust collection for routers helps me a lot with my
woodworking projects. I also use amazing woodworking plans