Joe,
I do a fair amount of cutting and welding in my dual purpose shop. I put
the DC in primarily to keep sawdust from building up and becoming a fire
danger when I weld, grind or cut.

I never use the DC when working with metals. This can have very devastating
results, fire being the greatest danger. A hot piece may smolder in the
sawdust for a few minutes or even hours, then combust when you are sleeping!

The steel swarf, if left un-attended too, will rust the cast iron tables. It
is a pain, but when switching between wood and iron work, a good cleaning is
required.

I just finished a project that involved both trades. Pictures are in ABPW -
A very secure cabinet.

Dave

"Joe Emenaker" wrote in message
om...
Okay, this is probably is going to strike most of you as a horrific
idea... but the more I thought about it, the more sense (or, at least,
the less nonsense) it made.

Back when I was making my own Biesemeyer clone
(http://joe.emenaker.com/Table-Saw%20...w%20Fence.html), I
was cutting a lot of angle-iron and steel tubing on my RAS fitted with
a metal-cutting wheel. Boy, did that thing make sparks like the
dickens! I thought it was going to ignite the sawdust which had
accumulated behind the RAS from earlier projects.

Well, I'm about to buy a DC and make my own cyclone for it. It struck
me that I'd be *asking* for trouble if I tried cutting metal with a DC
hooked up and running.

But what if I had a cyclone which emptied into a bin with a little
water in it? The water would catch all/most of those sparks. Not only
that, but it would be nice just for plain wood chips, since it would
help keep them under control when you detatch the bid to dump it
out... and it would help guard against some other DC-related fire
hazards (like hitting a nail or something).

So, I figured I'd ask: Does anybody out there *do* this?
Alternatively, has this been discussed before?

- Joe