Gizmo to automatically turn on dust extractor?

[theSouth]

Anyone know where to get a gizmo to detect my mitre saw is running and switch on another socket that has my (cheap) dust extractor?

I see that expensive dust extractors have this feature.

 

[HERTS P&D]

Your finger?

Andy

 

[JohnD]

Some of the workshop canister vacs have a power tool socket, that automatically turns on the vac motor when the power tool starts.

If you are doing a lot of workshop cutting, then it can be worthwhile having a canister vac set up outside (because of the noise) running during your working day, with piping run to your workstation to suck the dust out. You can probably use plastic waste pipe which is cheap and easy to join.

 

[foxhole]

I run my vac thru a footswitch which makes it easy to use when hands are full.

 

[theSouth]

thanks for all the sensible replies so far.

I did a bit of Googling and found lots of people asking the same question, mostly in the US. They talk of some "$20 device sold by Sears" that solves this problem.

The idea is that you plug the mitre saw in to one socket of the device and you plug the extractor in to another socket whose power is activated based on a relay driven by a detection of current flowing through the mitre saw socket.

Hope that makes sense.

I saw a lot of people have made one of these using off-the-shelf electrical components, but surely someone has released such a device by now. A really nice feature is the ability to have an overrun timer whereby the extractor would be left running for, say, 15 seconds even after the mitre saw load had stopped.

 

[big-all]

google "power take off socket"