Review on BOSCH RA1177AT Three-Piece Dust Extraction Hood Kit for Mr23-Series: Efficient Dust Control Solutions for Ultimate Precision by Jeremy Watkins

Some routing operations require the router to be hand held or there is no router table. In this case, the RA1177AT is the best choice. I haven't decided which table to take, so I was left with my hand. I have a Bosch MRC23EVSK which is a very good router, albeit a heavy one. I bought this dust removal kit to fill that gap. $25 price from Amazon which I think is fair. I wanted to test how good this dust remover is, so I ran some simple tests. I tried three pieces of kit for a solid base, for edge extraction and for immersion. I used the same gauges for all three devices ie 1/4", 1/2", 3/4" ruler. These numbers are nominal as I noticed the bits are a little too small. For 1/4". bit no problem. Almost all of the wood dust or shavings were sucked into the vacuum. At 1/2" some wood shavings were kicked out but all the dust was sucked in. For 3/4" I'm guessing that's about 85% (mainly wood chips) were sucked into the vacuum. I think this is very good for the reasons given below. I tried a dust extractor with a rounded 1/2 inch nozzle that only produced dust. It was all involved. When using these range hoods, you need to consider not only the power cord but also the vacuum hose. Let's say a 2 1/2" vacuum hose doesn't work well. Too bulky. I used a 1 1/2" vacuum hose that hooked up to the entire house vacuum system that I can hook up to in my garage. The hose is very long and the installation works well with no problems. I bought my house new and a vacuum cleaner was installed for the whole house. I later found out that this is a specialty contractor, meaning that this contractor saved some money by installing a system that didn't meet the specs of the regular system that a buyer would receive when a consumer buys a new one . The vacuum in this system is about half the normal capacity. This applies to this review in the sense that if you have a standard system then the vacuum will be even better than what I have explained in this review and therefore will produce better results. In summary, if you plan to do a lot of routing in one session, the bundle is a must-have. Not required for a small number of runs.