On Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 1:51:19 PM UTC-6, Max wrote:
Gentlemen, (you too, -MIKE-)
May I call upon your vast woodworking experience and knowledge?
Is there any such thing as effective dust collection for a router?
I have 3 Craftsman, 3 Hitachi, 3 Milwaukee, 2 Bosch and 2 DeWalt
routers. Of those, 9 are plunge routers.
I have purchased the dust collection devices for those for which such
devices were/are available. If I'm doing a "closed" operation (such as
the groove for installing shelf brackets/standards/strips, I have no
problem collecting the sawdust but any other operation results in clouds
of dust. (I may exaggerate just a bit but...)
I have the big Milwaukee, and 2 Hitachi M12Vs dedicated to router table
use and the collection isn't too bad.
But whenever I do a dado, etc...bad news.
So...is there any solution?

My definitive answer is "it depends"... on the router and setup.

I have a couple of routers - and ancient Craftsman and a Bosch plunge kit. Both have accessory collector fittings that do a decent job when hooked up to my shop vac.

The Bosch spends some time in my home-built router table and I built a collection chamber and vacuum hookup into the fence. It probably catches about 80-80% of the debris, but some still falls to the floor beneath the table (built into a wing of my table saw). I have been tempted to box the bottom of the table and add another vacuum pickup but haven't got around to it. Probably won't because the small amount of debris is easy to clean up.