hey everybody I'm Adam and today I'm going to show you how to build a router dust collection box out of acrylic so from a box around the router I'm gonna be using these acrylic sheets they're approximately 1/4 inch thick I'm just going to cut these 12 by 12 and no that's not going to work out to a 12 inch square box exactly that's fine but that's all I can get out of these sheets so that's what I'm gonna do these acrylic sheets are about 24 and 1/16 by 18 inches so that allows me to easily get my 12 by 12 pieces out this is the first time I've used one of these plastic cutting knives and I'm sure somebody's screaming at the screen that normally uses these and can tell me what I'm doing wrong but man what a satisfying sound they make it reminds me of something what is it ah yes there we go nice so I clamp down my t-square so that while I was scoring this the my straightedge didn't slide all over the place and I ruined the piece of acrylic basically what you want to do with one of these knives is score halfway through the thickness of the acrylic and then once you do that you can pop it like a piece of glass what I found worked best was after getting about a quarter of the way through getting a few good lines was to take it off the clamp and then I could more easily pull it in my direction and finish the scoring process bingo now there's just the protective plastic on the other side holding it and I just went ahead and finished the rest of the pieces after cutting all my pieces I just pulled the protective plastic back a little bit to get it ready to glue up [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] I'm just test fitting to make sure everything lines up pretty good because yeah I'm a little nervous because that I mentioned I've actually never done this before I'm gonna use weld on to glue these together and this stuff's pretty cool basically what it's doing is melting the acrylic to itself after holding it to itself for a few minutes the bond is pretty good and you can let it go and start moving around and get the other side's done [Music] to help me align everything and keep it straight I use these quick clamps so I couldn't find a flange nothing was available as quick as I wanted it to put at the bottom of this box so I'm just gonna use this PVC fitting and I'm going to cut this piece off right here but I want to be able to use one of my two and a half inch fittings to go in here and as you can see these don't line up so what I'm going to do is use my heat gun and I'm going to expand this PVC and then it's gonna fit perfectly if you've ever tried to mix and match pieces to make your own dust collection system sometimes it can be a nightmare and this is this can be a real lifesaver I've seen people do this by putting the PVC in their oven and yeah I just wasn't gonna try that I don't think I trust eating my food out of there then check it out I mark the center of the bottom of the box that I'd know where to line up my new flange then after drawing it I found an appropriately sized hole saw to cut it out and this is the point where after putting all of this work in I'm thinking please don't break please don't break please oh it broke no no it didn't break nevermind and we're good we're good then I just sanded the corners and I'm using some CA glue and activator [Music] time for the door I found these acrylic hinges on Amazon and I'll put links in the description for everything I used in this video this was the simplest way I can use the weld on to attach the hinges and man nice shot of my hand there after attaching the hinges to the door I just flipped the box over and welded the hinges to the side of my box so to keep my door closed I'm gonna be using these neodymium knee neodymium Neil Diamond magnets to keep the door shut cuz they're really small and really strong tone your Neil Diamond made magnets so I cut two acrylic tabs one will be for the top of the door and one for the bottom the way these will work is I'm gonna glue a neodymium magnet onto each tab and then a magnet onto the door in the corresponding location I just put a drop of CA glue and then hit it with the activator same thing for the other one now to make sure I lined everything up properly I just hit the back of the door with the activator and then I put some CA glue on the corresponding magnet you can see I've got both magnets here then I was just able to line it up perfectly and then after holding it there for a minute it was in the perfect location same thing for the other side [Music] so at this point the tabs aren't actually glued it's just the magnet holding the tabs in place so I went back with the weld on and attached the tabs because I used a PVC fitting for my flange it left a small gap that I went back and filled with silicone okay let's go in for a test pit so this cords not really going to come through here obviously but for my test fit pretty cool well that sucks are you serious right now are you sure you for real not cool table oh I got to figure out somehow my door is hitting the frame I was just gonna screw this up in here but mmm thinking maybe if I make it where I can slide it back and open it at the same time I can make it work so so the plan now is to make some wooden slides that will attach to the bottom of the router table and to the top of my router box I'm just using some scrap 3/4 and 1/2 inch pieces of plywood that I have so basically I'm making two sides that are basically s-shaped this will be the piece that attaches to the bottom of the router table [Music] [Music] [Applause] this other piece of three-quarter-inch will attach to the side of the box of the buy ox it's at the peaceful attempt on the side of the box and that's what will allow it to fly i pre-drilled holes through the acrylic and through the plywood and then slid the acrylic up and drilled a larger hole so that the screw didn't crack my acrylic and of course I put these in by hand so again I wouldn't break the acrylic after all this work time to drill another hole no pressure here this is for the cord to the router this is my next discovery since this wasn't the original plan my hinges are in the way no problem I'll just take my slide pass it through the table saw and problem-solve I got up underneath my workbench and the router table to see how everything fit and I wanted to find out where other pieces were to interfere I marked all this out and the plan was to just install it from underneath at which point my dad came over and was like that's kind of dumb why don't you just pull everything out and flip it over and I was like I'm not gonna do that it's just easier to attach it from underneath then he left then I took it out flipped it over and attached it from above [Music] after attaching the first side I'm just sliding it to make sure everything slides smoothly and attaching the second side I drilled a hole on one side of the slide which will be the outside and that's where I'll put one screw that will act as
