I have never liked overarm tablesaw blade guards and dust pickups- for a couple of reasons. First, the piping gets in the way, second, too much bulky mounting hardware and plastic crap around and partially obscuring the blade, and not too good at capturing the dust. So I have never used one.
Without getting into a safety discussion, my big complaint about not having a "blade guard" is that I do not like the amount of dust thrown off the topside of the blade. Not only is it thrown in the air but gets all over my clothes. I got myself an apron to protect my clothes, but I don't like that too much either and don't wear it much. So for years I have been looking at all kinds of overarm "dust pickups."
I finally saw this one on another forum and it has given me some ideas. The guy calls it a hula skirt guard. I plan to make significant changes to what is pictured, however. I figure I'll run a 4" DC line to it from the ceiling. I'll, attach a mount/frame to the ceiling also, to hold a much lighter and cleaner guard than pictured. The big objection I've had with these things is they are too bulky, constantly need to be adjusted or have special brackets to allow for different thicknesss of stock being cut, and get in the way of the fences, especially when making narrow rip cuts. So I'll make a "dust only" guard with just a plexiglass top plate and DC connection. The top will be slightly larger than the one pictured, but there will be no hard sides- I'll attach a longer hula skirt all around it. The height of the top will be fixed (except when I want to swing it out of the way) at a reasonable height above both the saw blade (at it's highest) and the fences so there should be no need for a parallogram pivot mount like the one pictured. The skirt will extend to the table top and the stock and rip/miter fences will just push it out of the way.
I hope this will reduce or eliminate the dust thrown off the top of my tablesaw blade. I'm not sure when I will get it built or tested, but I will report back with the results.
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