At the last Furniture Interest Group meeting someone mentioned Bruce Wedlock's dust collection system that turned on when he turned on a power tool. It was impressive and a question was asked how he did it.

The Jan./Feb 1988 issue of Fine Woodworking no 68 has the complete instructions, list of components, and colored diagrams of the circuitry. If you have a copy is starts on page 62.

Enjoy

The Fine Woodworking article Jim referenced is totally obsolete with current electronics and not how I accomplished the project.

I wrote a Popular Woodworking article on how to do this, but I don't see how to insert a PDF file into this replay.  If you'd like a copy, send me an email to wedlock@alum.mit.edu.

Today, you can get a solid state relay rated at 280V and 40A which should easily handle any home shop dust collector for about $20.  You will just need to develop a control voltage of 4 to 30 VDC, probably with a small toroidal core and some simple rectifying circuitry.  I will look into this.

Here's the Popular Woodworking article.

The Automater is no longer available.  However, a solid state relay now
plays the same role.  However, one needs to provide a DC control voltage for
it.  I think a ferrite toroid slipped over one of the power leads with some
secondary turns and a couple of circuit components would do the job.  I will
see if that works and report.  Be a few weeks at least.

Bruce