Hello All,
My new GO690 is on the way and I need to plan for a DC system. My current equipment is a GO690 (in a few days), and my miter/router station. My shop is currently 21’ x 29’ , with two garage doors along the 29’ wall, and has high ceilings (9.5’) which do not have drywall yet, and a sloped roof above that. Power is provided by a 60 amp sub-panel and current loads are lighting, 2 feeds for receptacles, and one 220 feed for the Grizz. My router/miter station consists of a 13’ long cabinet assembly with the miter saw dead center, and my router table on the far right, and is against the 21’ wall. I plumbed 2” thin walled central vac tubing through the cabinets to connect the miter saw to a take-off nipple and shop vac on the right side of my cabinet. Having the station on that wall allows me to rout long lengths of wood (wainscoting rails) with the garage door open. I plan to have my saw set up dead center of the shop with a 4 x 8 out feed/assembly table, and oriented to cut towards the garage doors. In the future, I will be adding a 13” planer, 14” bandsaw and possibly a sander.
My current dilemma is weather to buy a unit to “roll around” or just start plumbing what I already have and add branches later. I have done plenty of PVC and copper plumbing, but I have no sheet metal experience and am worried that if I plumb now, it will be harder to add units once everything is purchased. And for what I have, and plan to have, would a 2 HP 1550 CFM unit be enough if I ran ductwork?
Replies
Plenty of options
Over the past few years there have been a number of articles featured in the tools and shops relating to dust collection. Sandor Nagyszalanczy has a great book covering the subject, your local library or woodworkers club may have one. Both Onieda air systems and Penn State industries offer planning services, although I believe you need to purchase from them for that service. I moved last year and have just finished installing permanent ducting, tired of disconnecting and re=connecting hoses. I spent a great deal of time researching every option possible over the past year and burned up many hours in the archives.
I ended up going with spiral pipe and connectors, I decided that I was only going to do this once so the cost was an acceptable trade-off. I have a 900 sq. ft. shop and spent about $650, so I would imagine the cost for a shop your size would be at least twice that. The duct work installation is pretty straight forward, cutting the pipe was the easy just a hand grider with a cut-off wheel. Rivets and Metal tape to seal all the joints. Adding additional branches in the future would be as simple as drilling out a few rivets attaching a new fitting. I would recommend that you take your time and do your research, if its financially viable to go with a permanent system now you won't be sorry.
Best of luck
dust collection
There have been a number of discussions of DC systems here in the past, mostly in the power tools and shop sections. I'd suggest doing a search or, just scrolling through those sections. Lots of interesting ideas and different perspectives presented.
Not having the space for yet another machine, I still use a gravity-fed system (the floor), so can't be of much real help.
Planning is essential
I'm an avid hobbyist and have a 30 X 40 shop and 10 years ago installed a 2HP Oneida cyclone dust collector. Oneida designed the ducting based on where I told them I would place the tools. Oneida has been very helpful whenever I've worked with them.
I have an eleven foot ceiling so the ducts are well out of the way. The ducts are metal and were easy to work with, especially since I had no experience. I used metal shears and snips, connecting the ducts with pop rivets and sealing them with metal tape. I used soft perforated metal banding to secure the ducts to the ceiling and made plywood "holders" to secure the ducting to the walls near the tools. There is a blast gate at the end of each metal duct run and I use clear plastic hoses to connect between the blast gates and the tools.
The ducts are 6 inches in diameter starting at the cyclone and taper to either 4 inch or 5 inch ducting at WYE's installed at appropriate intervals. The 4 or 5 inch ducts terminate near the tools. Oneida recommended 5 inch ducts go to the table saw, miter saw, stationary combo disc and belt sander and the 12" jointer/planer combination machine. 4 inch ducts go to the band saw, router table and oscillating spindle sander. My table saw has a 5 inch dust port and everything else has 4 inch ports or smaller. Oneida recommended using the larger ducts for the smaller ports because it improves efficiency. Every article I've read recommends using long radius elbows to go around corners and that is what Oneida provided. One of my band saws has a metric dust port so I bought a 4" to 80 mm adapter to get a tight fit.
My system is effective but not perfect. It would be nice to have the collector in another room to minimize noise and burying the ducts in the floor, ceiling and walls would give me more wall space for cabinets or hanging jigs. If you choose to put the collector in another room or outside by sure to allow for air displacement by returning air to the shop. I still use a shop vac for collecting dust when working with other tools away from the existing ducts and for cleaning the floor and work surfaces.
I've read that burying the ducts in walls, ceilings or floors could pose a problem if you ever get a jam in the ducting. Access to clear the jam would be difficult. That said, I've never had a jam, probably because the ducts are so large and in most cases larger than the hoses or dist ports at the source of the dust/debris.
I have a 35 gallon drum/barrel at the bottom of my cyclone. It's small enough for me to lift to empty, but is a little heavy and cumbersome. A drum dolly would make life a little easier.
Pete
So what I'm gathering is that I should start ducting. My largest concern was adding drops later since I have never worked with ductwork, but I’m glad I posted here because it seems like I may learn more if I ask people “what would you do different”. I have heard really good things about Oneida and their designs, but I think their systems are a little out of my range right now, and seem like they are larger than say a 2HP grizzly unit. Anyone have a Grizzly 2hp that they are happy/unhappy with?
With a 2hp collector I think you have all the power you will ever need considering the size of your shop. I retrofitted my delta 50-850 1.5 hp collector with a cyclone unit and pleated filter, cyclone was purchased from e-bay for $199 and filter from wynn environmental for $140. I have 6" duct going to TS, jointer & planer with 4" branches going to drill press, band saw, miter saw and sander. Total length of 6" duct to TS & planer is 17' with 2 - 10' 4" branches to the other machines, the longest run is 22'. The cyclone, filter,spiral pipe and fittings cost me under $650. The planer is a 13" dewalt 735 and the collector has no problem keeping up, even planing stock the full width. The Collecter is about 6 years old which also was purchased off e-bay for $200 so for a total of $850 I have a ridged duct system that does everything I need it to do for $500 less than the cost of a 2 hp super dust gorilla. I don't mean this to sound like I'm knocking onida, far from it, but their system is way out of my reach as well. The next and last purchase for the system will be a long ranger, then I'll be done.
Don't forget DW PVC
I just finished a complete rebuilding of my DC. My shop is 20x28 with the DC in one corner, I have 4 drops. I made my own cyclone from 26 gauge galvanized metal and retrofitted my jet dc650 to fit on the top. Using 4" PVC DW not DWV I have a system that rocks. PVC has many advantages, cheap, easy to fabricate, seals tight, smooth interior. The main disadvantage is static electricity, this is real. I used 18 gauge copper wire wrapped around the outside with a "probe" inserted into the pipe every 4' or so, covering the 3/16 probe hole with aluminium tape maintained an airtight sytem. I went to great lenghts to eliminate every bit of flexible tubing I could, it is a system killer.
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