I would appreciate everyone’s comments on Dust Collection & Air Filtration.
My new shop will be one half of an attached 20’x24′ garage shared with the wife’s car. I expect to put up some type of isolation curtain separating the shop area from the rest of the garage.
On a cost conscious budget my thought is to purchase components and make an assembly similar to what PatriotDIY did in the You Tube video below. I would appreciate comments on Blower Assemblies, Cyclones, HEPA Filters … and Shop Air Filters.
Thank you in advance.
Replies
Best way to save$ and get components is to buy a used DC. Local craigslist / marketplace sites should spit out a few to pick from.
I have a healthy respect for the damage wood dust can do to our lungs. No matter what you do, I'd suggest getting something like a Dylos particulate counter to measure how well your system is really working.
I think you need to set reasonable expectations before you start.
Somewhere between dusty and horribly dusty is easily achievable.
It's a lot harder the closer to 'microprcessor manufacturing clean room' you want to get.
Realistically, the best you can hope to achieve is to collect most of the dust at or near the source, but in a setup such as you describe, you are onto a loser if your wife is bothered about a dusty car.
1. LIMIT DUST PRODUCTION - some machines make a lot, some less - if you want low dust then a mitre saw is not in your future. A table saw will collect a lot more of the dust. Choose hand tools where you can- it takes less time to chop a couple of mortises by hand than to set up and rout them. Of course if you have 16 to do...
2. Take the really bad stuff outside. Routing and circ saws are a nightmare for dust - even with extraction, cleanish is the best you can do.
3. If dust on cars is the big issue, an air cleaner will reduce that more than a dust collector.
4. A cheap old bagged vacuum cleaner will collect more dust from smaller tools than any fancy cyclone set up. They are very cheap and so are bags. I keep wanting a Mirka DC but they cost upwards of NZD1500 and that's like a lifetime supply of bags for my equally powerful and effective Tellus.
5. A Leaf blower is a great way to clean residual dust from a garage. Make sure you set your tools up so that there are no unhelpful places for dust to hide - those are wasted storage areas anyway.
I guess my advice is - don't do what you see in the video. I would buy a second hand DC for the big chips, an air cleaner and an old vacuum cleaner and spend the rest on something nice for your wife when she complains about the dusty car.
The configuration that Patriot used is the correct way to use a central / cyclone system with multi-drops. 4 Inch pipe is very adequate. It's the same configuration I've used for the past six years with success. The collection bag on the central DC has about a cup of dust in it after the 6 years and the filter bag is still clean. (See attached picture) The cyclone has 20-gallon barrels which I swap out when full. You will need a 1,000 CFM ceiling mounted air scrubber. The recommended method is to install it along a wall. My experience was improved when it was centered on the ceiling of the space with the intake at one end of the space. There is an open space adjacent to my shop and little or no dust escapes the area that the air scrubber serves. You might want to experiment a little to see how this works for your area.
Good luck to you.
You definitely want a setup with a hepa filter on the dust collector. I would advocated for a cyclone too--either as part of the dust collector or separate. You can use a hose from this dust collector to rapidly clean up the shop after you work. Rockler sells a flexible hose that I use to connect to the big machines and move around as needed. It takes less time than blast gates and hoses everywhere and leaves more clear space. That said, you need a shop vac probably for use with power tools like disk sanders, routers, and chop saws.