My new year’s resolution is to improve my dust collection. I tried to address that (partially) with the purchase of a Fein vacuum a few years ago but that’s already not working (and I really did not use it THAT much). Possibly problems with the brushes on the motor. The commutator was pretty black too. Cleaned it and it worked a little then refused again to work. Might be good for sanding but not everything (if I get it working again).
Aaaaanyway..I am leaning toward a portable unit, FWW recommends 1.5 hp. Hard to justify a cyclone but I am open to suggestions. In the FWW article they did on outfitting a shop for 5k, they had a delta. My delta tabletop drill press didn’t exactly spin concentrically and the motor burned out, again after relatively little use. And my first miter saw was a delta and the fence was warped so I returned it. So I’m leery of Delta.
I have a Jet cabinet tablesaw, dewalt tabletop planer, small inca jointer, miscellaneous powered hand tools and of course a few sanders. Weekend/evening woodworker, been doing it for many years and want to continue breathing unencumbered by an oxygen bottle for many more. Can anyone make suggestions?
Thanks much
Johnny
Replies
Dust collectors are good at sucking up the big chips, but fail to trap the finest particles. These fine particles are the real health problem for us. Some dust collectors are better than others, and good ducting design is important in maximizing their efficiency. I have a Jet 2 hp collector with pleated cannister filter. I am reasonably satisfied with it, but there are issues with sealing at times.
In order to address the fine particle issue, you should consider an air filter. They are designed to filter out the fine particles not caught by the dust collector or other point of use filters. I use a Delta model which hangs from the ceiling. I turn it on whenever I want to clean up the shop air. It takes about 30 minutes at full speed. You should also consider a good face mask or respirator. There are plenty of good options. And finally, point of use filters have a place. I finally hooked up my ROS to the shop vac with a switch from Sears, so that the ROS switch also controls the vac. That really reduces the airborne dust when sanding.
Good luck.
Tom.
lee valley has this thing
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=30278&cat=1,42401&ap=1can i use a dust filter in conjunction with a shop vac (rigid 5hp) piped to all the stations? what is the limit in terms of stations and length of 2.5" hose that a shop vac will.....suck?complicated question, i know, but any help would be appreciated. just don't have room for traditional dust collector.
Dust Collection.....interesting topic. I have had the same problem as many folks here have had. The bags/filters are messy, you have to empty them all the time, they reduce cfm....on and on. I have a 2HP shop fox and it works well, but I didn't care for the suction it had. I think its listed at 1750 cfm. But heres the deal. All of these companies, with the exception of Oneida, rate the cfm without any bags or filters. Per Oneida, you are probably getting 1/2 of the cfm with the bag/filter on.
After hearing that, I thought " I wonder how this would perform with the bag off?" I tried it and the cfm difference was amazing! Then I said to myself, "self, instead of upgrading to a 3 HP Gorilla, why not mount the motor and fan on a bracket on the wall and dump the dust/shavings outside?"
Well, all my ductwork is 5" metal pipe, so thats what I did. Instead of barely being able to pickup dust/shavings off one machine, I can run 2 at the same time. No more dust....no more shavings....no more filters....no more bags. It works great and I saved $1600 just by listening to O'neida. That's equals ALOT of LN products!
If someone want pic's of my set up, please let me know.
Hmmm. What do your neighbors think?
Tom.
Tom,
I live on 180 acres. The neighbors, which are whitetail deer, don't mind. Also, if you ever see David Marks shop in Santa Rosa, CA., which is highly residential, he has the same setup.
I Would love to see your pics. Solving the dust problem is next on my shop agenda when I return to the frosty north in late March.Stewie
The Sawdust Shop
Ducting 1200cfm outside doesn't cause you any make up air problems? I've read about it sucking furnace fumes back down the chimney...
Quickstep,
I have about 8 machines hooked up to the dust collector all of which run through 5" metal ductwork that has blast gates on each machine. My shop is 30' x 30' that I built for woodworking only. I heat with a woodburning stove with a small wall mounted heater that keeps it warm when I'm not in there.
After thinking about it, the only problem with this setup is many people might not be able to dump sawdust outside. Where I live, this is not an issue. The cfm that I picked up by dumping it outside is unbelievable. When my pile outside gets large, I take my Bobcat and scoop up all the dust and take it back to the woods and dump it there.
I had to do something, I was getting broken out pretty bad by all the walnut dust in my shop. I like to build things out of walnut, so I have a large collection of it on hand. If you have the space to dump the sawdust outside, I would definately recommend it. I am only 35 years old with a stay at home wife and two kids, so spending 1500 on the Oneida Air 3HP Cyclone wasn't an option for me.
I don't know if ducting the stuff outside is right or wrong, but I'm just trying to get by with what I have and it works GREAT for me.
Jeff
I do have to secound the question of safty. That kind of negative airflow will be (or should be) a huge issue in a building. How this does not effect the draft of everything in the building I do not know.
Doug Meyer
Doug,
How could it possibly be a safety issue? All the ductwork is hooked directly to machines with blast gates. The dust collector cannot suck air anywhere besides the machines. I have read you posts for awhile now, and can tell your not a dipstick, so maybe it is I who am missing something? Am I?
Jeff
Ok lets try this,
If you open a gate (and you have to, to use this) then the air is sucked out of the tool, but the air has to get into the tool from someplace. So the air will come from the rest of the room. That creates a low pressure affect on the rest of the room. If you did not provide any make up air (and trust me it is filtering in from the walls and other areas) the building would implode, at some point. Thus air is entering the building. Now on an old building this was not an issue as the walls had little insulation and plaster breathed and so did the wood siding. Also the old windows were a joke and the doors had never even heard of weather stripping.
But the newer a building is (or at least if it has been remodeled) we get insulation that slows air infiltration in the walls, the new windows are very tight, the siding does not breath and we put paint on the drywall that lessens the air flow. And we do a LOT of other things also. So now we have buildings that do not breath very well (this means they don't have a way for air to get into the building) Now we have air loss from the building (I think you said 150CFM or some such) In that case you are moving all the air in a room that is 10'X10'X8' in 5.3 minutes (less if you move the air faster) this means that in a perfect world if you started one machine in a room that size no matter what else happened with out make up air (inflow from outside the building, of some sort) the building would have no air at all in 5.33 minutes. Now this does not really happen as their are other factors, like the airflow decreases with a lower pressure and such but you see from this that the air has to come from someplace. So if you have a wood burning stove with a pipe venting this out, it becomes a danger. What happens is instead of the nasty gasses going up the pipe with the hot air, the dust collectors needing air pulls the air back in down the pipe (path of least resistance) and you suck all the fumes back into your space. This will also happen to your Fire place in the house, or any gas burning appliance.
In my new house the thing is tight enough that my fire place has its own outside air supply. The furnace has a supply for air to use in combustion and a make up supply to bring fresh air into the house. The lack of air changing is so bad in fact on modern buildings that this is the leading cause of "Sick Building Syndrome"
To show you how tight buildings are getting this is the main cause (well one of anyway) of all the mold that new houses are getting. The wet air that is in the building stays in the building. In an old house from 1600 the whole thing leaked air and the moist air was mixed with drying air and all the air from inside that was hot worked it's way out and cold outside air worked it's way in so we did not have these issue. Tech is nice but as we advance we run into new issues.
This is why I was worried about your system. Now if you only run this with the garage door wide open you are fine. But if you seal the building up the air that you are pumping outside has to come back into the space some how. And this will normally bring some dangerous stuff with it as it pulls things that should vent outside back in. This is worse then dust. Dust can kill you next year or the year after. CO2 poisoning can kill you and your family (this is attached to your house no?) this morning. And the way that works you may not know in time to do anything about it. I had CO2 sickness when I was a teen from running a gas engine in a WELL ventilated area (it was net vented enough) and it was not fun. Worse part is until someone else came in and pointed this out to me I did not even know it was happening as it made my to dazed to realize it. After I got out I spent the next day with what appeared to be a nasty case of the flu.
OH if you want to do a make up air supply, well you could by a complete dust system for the cost of a make up air supply that will bring in the air and heat it also. OH and this hold true for the summer if you use AC also as you will still not have windows open to the outside. Also keep in mind that on old buildings this is still an issue. The DC moves so much air so fast that the cracks and leaks can not keep up so it will back draft anything that it can. And as for the amount of make up air you need, Well it is a LOT. A DC system puts a lot of volume into a small pipe so you will need (I would guess here) at lest 4 or more times the opening of the pipe to allow the air to just flow bake into the space. I would have to talk with an expert to get any real numbers on that but it is like a garden house that has pressure vs using gravity. You need a lot bigger opening to let the air back in when it has not preasure behind it (and remember the make up air needs to be the path of least resistance to the DC or it will ignore that path and suck the air in from someplace else. This is why my make up air is right next to my furnace (and also goes into the cold air return)
I am going to put my DC in a closet attached to my shop (in the other half of the garage) and one thing I need to do is provide an opening for the air to get out of the area the DC is in and back into the garage. Other wise I am likely to suck in all sorts of nasty stuff.
Well sorry about this being so long a post but this is potentially VERY dangerous.
And as a reminder I work for an Architectural Design company and I work with people that put together HVAC systems so I do have a basic understanding of what is going on here. I may not be an expert to the point of being able to do the calculations but I do understand what is needed. Just so no one thinks I am pulling this out of thin air (sorry could not resist the joke)
Doug Meyer
None of the current dust collection systems are powerful enough to create much of a vacuum so if the air you are exhausting outside the shop wasn’t coming back into the room from some place the dust collection would quickly have no draw at all.
The replacement air can be coming from open or poorly sealed windows and will make heating or cool of the shop tough to do. Worse yet the replacement air could be coming from furnace or wood stove flue drawing dangerous gases back into the shop
Doug,
Excellent point. My shop is 30 x 32 x 9 / 1800 cfm = 4.8. So I guess if I am going to run the dust collector more than 4.8 minutes, I should open a window and let the air flow in. I don't usually have the collector for running for very long most of the times anyway. I really appreciate your input.....Thank-you!
Jeff
Let me point out that you dont need to vent all the air out to cause a problem. As soon as you start venting more air then you are making up (out go more then in flow) you can start pulling things in (like smoke) from places you don't want to pull.
Doug Meyer
I have a cheapo exhaust fan in my basement to exhaust the little bit of overspray I get from spray finishing (latex only). If I don't open a door or window in the basement when I run the fan, even on low, I will find ashes on the floor in front of the UPSTAIRS fireplace from air being sucked down the chimney, and this is in a fairly loose house, with the door to the basement from upstairs closed. I'm inclined to think a good dust collector would move more air than this cheapo fan. This would indicate to me that not only will makeup air be found, but may come from an unlikely source.
Oh yes your are right it will and that is the problem. If you are sucking the air back down the fire place past the damper, out the door (if it has one) then through the upstairs and then past the door to the basement and down the stairs then out the window what do you think is happening to the gas exhaust from the top of the hot water heater? Or the furnace? That is not going to make it out of the building either. And while the smell of the fireplace ash may be bad the smoke from the fire place would be worse and the fumes from the burning of other things could/can kill you or make you very ill.
I can not stress how dangerous these issues can be.
Doug Meyer
Good points all. To put your mind at ease, my water heater is electric and I make sure to turn off the furnace when I use the fan and never ever use the fan if I have a fire going in the fireplace.
Doug is right in that backdrafting of your woodstove will likely be a problem with this setup. And one of the components of the exhaust gasses from any sort of combustion process is carbon monoxide, which is a deadly, colorless, odorless gas. As he pointed out, most people don't realize they're experiencing CO poisoning until they're either really sick or dead.
The setup you have, as you described it, has the potential of causing you health problems or fatality. It would be fine to run it this way in the summer when you don't have the woodstove going. But in the winter it might be best to go back to the collection bags. Just don't want to see anyone get hurt..
Zolton
Thank-you to all for the information, especially Doug. Did a neat little experiment today to learn about air movement. I opened the bottom drawer on my woodburning stove and fired up the dust collector. No windows open, doors closed. Holy Ashes!! It is unbelievable the amount of suction in the hole building.
Again Doug, thank-you very much. You may have been at an really big auction for woodworking tools if you hadn't told me. You live close to me, as I live in NE Indiana and I can actually drive southeast and go to Michigan.
My question is this. I MUST get rid of all the dust, etc... I am very allegic to walnut and this is typically what I use. I cannot afford to buy a dust gorilla and I don't want to deal with bags. So, I installed a set of louvers that open when the dust collector is on, and they work.
With this set-up, are more comfortable Doug?
Jeff
If you must do the vent outside bit, I suggest you contact an HVAC guy of maybe an architect or some such (if you know anyone like that) and ask them what kind of opening size you need to allow for a non pressurized return air that is at LEAST as great as your DC moves. They have ways of calculating this. IF I still had access to my old Ductulator (not kidding that was the name) I could figure it out but I am not sure what the size needs to be. I think you will be surprised at the size of this. I would not be shocked if it turns out to be the size of a good sized window. So if you open this opening when you turn on the unit you should be ok.
I have a store that I am working on the design for and it has a hood in the prep area that is about 6' deep and about 21' long (yes over 130 sq ft off hood) and it moves so much are that the out go is a pipe someplace around 21" in dia. This thing is like a tornado, the make up are system for this building is MASSIVE but it is designed to bring the air in a bit faster then it goes out, so it will be nice and safe.
So get someone to run the numbers for you (this is a FAST thing to do) as you know the outflow. And just make sure your open area is at least that big, and you will be good.
And like I said this will suck the air out of your house if it is attached. So while it would be a shame to lose you it would be a tragedy to lose the wife and kiddies (if you have any) and even I don't want a hand plane that badly.
Doug Meyer
You could physically hook it up, but you would be disappointed in the performance. 2.5" hose is to small for a reasonable system connected to multiple tools. I would recommend you consider a portable unit that could easily hook up to one tool at a time. Get creative about a quick disconnect coupling.
The dust collector you referred to would not provide enough flow when connected to ducting of almost any reasonable size. It is designed to work without any flow restriction, except for the built in filters.
Good luck. Tom.
thanks,i was going to hang the air filter in the ceiling....not connected to piping, in addition to the shop vac, though the shop vac is out for now. thanks for the advice.
"Get creative about a quick disconnect coupling." That was a frustrating issue for me until I found that the readymade "quick connect" fittings work great with the plastic blast gates. The quick connects I'm using don't fit actual outlets (such as on a jointer) very well, but they slide all the way onto the plastic BG's very easily. Maybe the ones from Penn State work better, I dunno.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Good points. I'm going to be adding central dust collection to my 40' x 50' shop this year. I do use a wood burning stove for heating so venting outside does pose a problem. Never thought of it. I will just have to filter the return air well .
Thanks, paul
First of all, I didn't read the 5K article, so I'm not familiar with which model Delta they showed, but if it's designed anything like my 1.5HP Jet, "portable" is something of a stretch. Depends on the design and how it affects pushing the thing around.
That aside, I strongly recommend getting a unit with a cannister filter, not a bag filter. They capture much finer dust (which is very important, per the first response to your post), and don't involve dragging a dusty bag out for emptying periodically -- guaranteed that will get you dusty and grumpy.
I have the Jet 1.5HP with cannister filter, and a JDS air scrubber mounted on the ceiling. The Jet does a great job on everything but my contractor's saw -- but that's the saws fault, not the DC's. As far as reliability goes, the saw and jointer are both Jets. I don't use these machines day in and day out, but the motors have been fine and I don't see forum reports of Jets going belly up.
JDS has always tested out as the best air filter in the group that hobbiests consider. More efficient under load, less leakage, that kind of stuff. You can also build your own air scrubber using a blower from a heating unit -- often available cheap if not free from furnace companies. When they replace a heating system in a house, I think they usually just toss the blowers. I saved ours from the dump.
You'll still need your mask and such, as there will still be fine dust in the air, but the difference will be noticeable when you use these two accessories.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
You could consider a downdraft table for sanding and one of those thingies which fits a garbage can as a large particle separator. I bought two of them but found that it only works for jointer and planer shavings, so I removed it from the other branch of my collector. Actually, an occasional tablesaw cutoff would find its way there also.
Good luck!
Cadiddlehopper
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