Dust Collection – anyone use a Big Gulp?
forestgirl
| Posted in General Discussion on
Anyone out there had experience with the Big Gulp hood from PSI (or anything similar)?? Would like to hear pros and cons, rants and raves, details about how to make it work efficiently.
forestgirl — you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the girl 😉
Another proud member of the “I Rocked With ToolDoc Club” …. :>)
Replies
Hi FG
I have one hooked up behind my miter saw.
Seems to pick up a good amount of the dust thrown.
Jeff
I tried the big gulp behind the lathe for capturing sanding dust. Not bad but more than I needed for that purpose. So I took it off for some experiments I was doing with trying to get decent DC for the CMS.
The BG behind the CMS is ok but does not capture nearly enough of the dust for my tastes. I combined the BG behind the CMS with a 10" to 5" reducer placed in a hole in the saw bench and acting as a downdraft below the blade insert. I am using 5" hose for the DD. The BG and the Downdraft together work quite well.
If I could change the BG for CMS use, I would make it even bigger. The Gorilla Gulp maybe.
Hey, maia007, thanks for the info! From what I've heard, dust collection on a lathe is very much an uphill battle, LOL. I like your idea of putting a downdraft hole behind the CMS, I think I'll try that. First, though, I have to figure out how to re-arrange the "furniture" in the shop so all tools can connect to my new DC.
You got me with "10" to 5" reducer" -- what's 10"??? forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
A reducer is a heavy gauge sheet metal fitting that necks down or "reduces" larger diameter pipe to smaller diameter pipe. So a 10" to 5" reducer is the fitting that connects a 10" pipe with a 5" pipe.
In my case, I wanted to use a 5" plastic flex connection hose to connect the CMS to my 5" mainline. That meant that I needed the small end of the reducer to be 5". The large end should be as large a diameter that could fit under the CMS....or 10" in my case. You cut a hole in the workbench and shove the 10" end of the fitting thru the bench cutout and up under the CMS and do what you can to make it air tight with duct tape. The 5" end then connects to your dust pickup. Picture a funnel under the CMS connected to a flex hose.
You get a lot of air being sucked down your blade insert. The chips blowing out the CMS' "exhaust" (or where the CMS dust bag fits) then shot into the Big Gulp. The BG is connected to the dust system with a 4" flex hose and then to a 5" to 4" reducer which is attached to the 5" mainline at the blast gate.
I found that I needed to place a 3/4" street elbow (a pvc pipe fitting) onto the dust bag mount in order to better direct the chip flow into the center of the BG. Also, when turning the CMS table to cut angles, the flow of dust can be better directed by twisting the street elbow.
I tried the downdraft by itself and the BG by itself. Neither works as well as both together.
I knew what a reducer was, but I was invisioning your DC having a 10" hose!! Too funny, guess I wasn't quite on my game. Is the 10x5 a PVC fitting?
Any chance you could post a pic of the set-up. I'm trying to envision the elbow thing on the back. Sounds like your street elbow comes off the already-existing 90* fitting that the dust bag attaches to? I can remove that stock elbow and have the straight pipe facing the Big Gulp, or even connect directly to it with the DC hose. Seems like having one (let alone two) 90* turns there would adversely impact collection.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
The 10 to 5 reducer is sheet metal. I dont believe there would be an application for that kind of reduction in plumbing or irrigation...so I dont think they are made in pvc.
The street elbow is loosely fitted to your existing fitting (to which you dust bag fits). The elbow is 45 deg. so there is just one slight bend. You can twist the elbow and orienting it as needed to shoot the chips straight back to the 4" outlet in the Big Gulp. I have seen other variations where people made their own Big Gulps from plywood that look like they would work fine. Some of these have hvac hoods attached to facilitate chip removal.
In earlier experiments, I tried connecting the "bag fitting" to a piece of hose rather than to a hood or Big Gulp device. But with the small hose setup, a fair amount of dust is shot from the back of the saw that neither the downdraft nor a hose connected to the bag fitting on the CMS will get.....thus the enter the Big Gulp.
I will see about getting a pix in a day or so.
Several months ago I was in my local tool store and they had some Big Gulps with a small part of the corner broken off. They were selling them really cheap, so I picked one up. I epoxied three magnets along the front edge and hooked it up to a 4" hose that had about a 5' length to it. I've experimented with having it on the front of the lathe. The front of the lathe is where most of the chips come off the work piece. I can put it right where the work piece is and cock it up at a slight angle with my leg or waist. It really grabs the bulk of the chips coming off the gouge.
Caveat: I'm not much of a turner, at least not yet. I'm not sure others would recommend this, but it feels comfortable (for the time being). I have a 3 hp dust system, so I have a lot of suction. But, I can put a 10" log between centers and turn most of it away and not have a mess. I can post a picture if anyone is interested.
Alan & Lynette Mikkelsen, Mountain View Farm, est. 1934, Gardens & Fine Woodworking, St. Ignatius, MT
Hey, Alan, somehow I missed your post yesterday. I like the idea of the magnets. Since my router table is steel, I'll probably use magnets for some DC arrangements.
As long as propping up the Gulp doesn't hurt your concentration, I'd guess it's OK. If you have time to take/post a pic, that'd be great.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Jamie, hope you can find an idea here:
Alan & Lynette Mikkelsen, Mountain View Farm, est. 1934, Gardens & Fine Woodworking, St. Ignatius, MT
I'm SURE your head NOT THAT BAD!
Thanks, Alan. Looks pretty comfortable, hope Dennis sees the pic. Got one observation, though. That Shop Fox mortiser really looks like it's in the way, very inconvenient. I'll be glad to get it out of the way so you can work more comfortably.<g!!>forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
LOL, the mortiser gets used a lot more than the lathe! I've found the lathe to be an especially evil machine. I got the lathe and all the tools last Thanksgiving for 'free' from a family member. Then she saw some of my tables and decided I could build her an $800 table in return for the 'free lathe'. Then, I bought a slow speed grinder. $$ Now I need a Wolverine jig.$$$ But first I have to buy a Talon chuck. $$$$$.
I love free tools.
Alan & Lynette Mikkelsen, Mountain View Farm, est. 1934, Gardens & Fine Woodworking, St. Ignatius, MT
I have used similar products. They will pick up large particles and chips if held close to operation. No good for fine particles.
Big Gulp.. I get some at the local 7/11?
Best to downsize the picts before the cyber patrol jumps on you.
I'm trying to encourage the cyberpatrol to be gentl.
Funny thing I just discovered -- since I wanted to keep these photos, instead of opening each one, I just right-clicked and selected "Save target as." They downloaded really fast! Weird, that one.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Thanks so much, Maia007! I've resized them for other dial-uppers, and attached below. Am saving them for reference when I get my mitersaw totally set up!
To All: #4 shows the big funnel.
For those who are curious about the image editing, I simply resized them to 50% -- as you can see it made more than 50% difference in file size. The cheap little program I use allows me to do this in a batch, so I selected the 4 thumbnails, clicked Batch--->resize--->540 (which was 50% of the original 1080 width).
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Edited 4/24/2005 12:07 pm ET by forestgirl
Thank you for re-sizing the photo files. I deleted the big ones. I just got a flyer from Woodcraft tonight that promises DUST FREE TURNING....part of our previous discussion."The Provac Turning System" features what appears to be hollow handled turning tools with a vacuum hose attached. Apparently, the chip are captured near the tool tip and then run down the tube to the vac. It says "enjoy dustless turning". Sounds as intriguing as it does expensive.
Those turning tools sound too good to be true! Some of the pictures I've seen (I don't turn) with shavings flying all over the place! Amazing to think they could get sucked up the handle of a tool.
re: pictures -- you can take 'em if you want. Right click, "Save as..." Thanks for posting them! Reminds me, I've gotta surf over and take a look at the shop-built Big Gulp. forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Eeeeeek! You deleted the whole post! Didn't it have a link for moi where I could go look at a shop-built BG? Help! (Don't take that cyberpatrol stuff seriously. They just had a melt-down a few days ago, don't think it'll happen again.)forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Maia007 sent me the link mention early and then deleted. It's a pretty impressive home-made set up for dust collection on a CMS, posted at Woodcentral. A bit of work to go through the posts, but here's the link:http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/messages.pl?read=217420#Responses
The unit mentioned is pictured in Don Evans' posts that have *PIC* in the title.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Forestgirl,
I use 2 on my 36" lathe. Like Alan's mine sits forward of the centerline of the machine. My lathe is a 50 year old cast iron craftsman, which is a benchtop model. I mounted the 2 ports side by side into the table I built for the lathe. Collects dust well. One problem though. If I don't close the blast gates during adjustments to the tool, I risk droping tools ect. into the 4" dust collector hose. Doh!!
"I risk droping tools ect. into the 4" dust collector hose. Doh!!" Tom's (tms) dad would appreciate that. As told by Tom, when he got his nice cyclone collector hooked up to the labyrinth of ducting in that big shop of his, his dad's glasses got sucked in during a close look-see! "Hey, Dad, don't get toooooo clo.....Oh, *^&%!"forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Forest I got a BigGulp at the local 7-11 by me! Not that good...
Edited 4/25/2005 4:40 pm ET by Will George
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled