I just wanted to share the mods I did for my 4x6.?
The blade brush wheel is made with a 1-1/4" wire brush wheel with 1/4" ID bore, 1/4" mini pillow block bearing, 1/4" x 1" long shoulder bolt, and a plastic spacer I turned on my mini lathe. The mounting bracket is made from a piece of sheet aluminum I had laying around. I painted? it black after it was completed. When I was testing it out, I mounted the pillow block to the bracket with sheet metal screws which were later replaced by #10 machine screws, washers, lock washers and nuts. I cut aluminum a lot and It works very well at removing chips that get stuck in blade.
The other blade brushes keep most of the chips from getting on the guide bearings and pulley. They are made from plastic wire brushes, mounted with metal strips and held by rare earth magnets. The pulley brushes are made from small brass wire brushes mounted to some 90¡ã brackets that I bent open to about 150¡ã and are also held by rare earth magnets. Using magnets allows me to flip the brushes around easily as they wear. All of these brushes might seem overkill, but the brushes that wipe the sides of the blade don't do well at removing chips from the teeth, hence the brush wheel. I can say the inside of the saw is staying about 90% cleaner than it was without them.
The chip pan is a plastic mud pan from Home Depot. It had two black metal strips in it that are for scraping the mud from your mud knife. I cut these and used them for mounting the pan. It's mounted using screws already on the saw for the lock pin and power cord brackets on the inside. I used the slot in the chip pan to hold a piece of aluminum sheet to cover the area leading to underneath the saw, which allow the chips to fall through into the pan.
I will add all of these pics to a folder in photos section, under Rob M.
