I am looking for ideas on how to set up a dust and chip collector for my Jet Mini lathe. I have a shop vac that I can dedicate to the task, but want to get some ideas on how to set up or build a hood or some sort of device to grab the chips etc. while I am turning. I can exhaust the vac to the outside easily.

My Lathe is currently mounted on a solid top bench.

Any ideas or photos of a good system will be appreciated.

I too use a shop vac, but keep the nose down low on the backside,eats most of the dust, but the larger chip's/shaving's fly towards me or down on top of the motor getting sucked into the fan. so I put together a shelf that cover's the rail, behind the rail,up the side's,down the front with a shelf to catch the byproduct[junk].then when it get's to piled up, I suck it up.

http://24.63.160.194/dsc01381.jpg

Great tool rest! Where did you get it?

out of the scrape junk at the machine shop....1" a-iron-foot long and a pc. of 1/2 rod....came home ,drilled a hole in the middle of the a-iron, set the rod in,,went back,,they zapped it together..bob's your uncle...never needs to b moved when doing normal size bait's.

Machine shops are good for something. What it is I still haven't figured out yet though.