Helical planer + cyclone = shavings out the exhaust?

[Will Blick]

Have CV cyclone, exhaust out exterior of building, no bags...works great.... only microscipic dust particles leave through the exhaust..... then....
I got a PM Byrd Helical head planer, some of the spiral shavings exit the exhaust?
has this happened to anyone else? Thoughts on why?

[Philip Rodriquez]

I have a griz with a byrd head and nothing makes it to the filter unless I over fill my cyclone. Were you full?

[Will Blick]

No, not full....
but I also noticed the spiral shavings spend too much time swirling around in the cyclone....so the cyclone gets way to busy when using the Byrd planer vs. all the other machines....

My first thought was, with no resistance on the exhaust, and the Byrd planer is a short duct run, its possible too much FPM = shavings not wanting to settle while in the cyclone as there is too much suction pulling the shavings upward... ?

[Erik Christensen]

check that you have zero air leaks on the bottom of your cyclone to your chip bin - it does not take much to get upward air flow that will carry over light stuff

[Brian Kincaid]

Yeah, Erik is on the right path there.

Also, if a piece of material has the 'perfect' weight and air resistance (total) it will suspend/spin in the cyclone until the air flow changes or something hits it to move it out of orbit. I see this a lot with my 'mini cyclone' on my shop vac, but once in a blue moon I'll hear something in my big DC. I just close off the duct and the piece will drop in to the bin.

I suspect you might have a small leak that allows some fluffy suspended chips to find their way up into the outdraft.

-Brian

[larry senen]

my new spiral planer make smaller, lighter chips than the 3 straight knife style i had.
they fill the can faster too.
haven't had any complaints from the guy i give them to.he owns horses and uses them in the stalls

[Phil Thien]

I agree with others that you may have a leak.

[glenn bradley]

+1 on the leak. You could bungee a towel or something over the exhaust to introduce some resistance and see if the problem stops but, I'm still betting on a leak. As mentioned, it doesn't take much to get an updraft going.

[Will Blick]

Thx for responses..... makes sense... the puzzling part is, the cyclone has always worked great, still does, EXCEPT this new helical head planar... as mentioned above, the spiral shavings seem to have undesirable weight to air-resistance characteristics.... which keeps the chips in the cyclone toooo long, they don't want to go down...yet the Table saw dust makes a few downward turns and goes right down to the bin.

A leak makes perfect sense.... there is no obvious leaks, I use strapped barrel type bins with heavy plastic bags. But its possible very small leak(s) can create this problem, at least with the spiral chips... any ideas on how to check this? Maybe some smoke matches to track the cloud around the bins?

[Erik Christensen]

easy way to check where the leak is - run the dc with the light shavings swirling in the cyclone and start duct taping joints - flex hose to cyclone, flex hose to chip barrel, removable top to chip barrel - for me I saw a difference when I sealed the removable top to the chip barrel which told me I had to devise a better seal on the lid top

what was amusing is the cyclone suction was enough to dimple the sides of the galvanized trash can I was using as a chip barrel even with an air leak sufficient to cause dust carryover to my filter cartridges

[Will Blick]

About the only thing I do NOT have Gorilla Taped (sure beats duct tape) is the seal around the bin top - bin, which has a pressurized "snap clamp" on it....

Hopefully I can run some tests tonight...

I want to replace this "Y" set-up I have which feeds two 30 gallon bins... I want a single tall straight bin, 50+ gallons....any suggestions for one designed for dust collection, with tight seal around top, maybe bag-hold down system?

[Will Blick]

Conclusion to this oddity....

1) There were no leaks.....

2) James from ClearVue mentioned, spiral shavings and Cyclones are not a good mix, workable, but potentially problematic.

3) James suggested changing bags at 50-60% full...this did the trick...with empty bags, the spiral shavings settled.... still not like conventional dust....

live n learn....

[glenn bradley]

Good info Will. Thanks for sharing the solution. More frequent bag emptying is not a bad thing. I empty mine at about half full just to make it easier to handle and so have only seen "stuff" in my exhaust (filter) when I let the can over-fill; way over fill :o. I never realized it could be a problem if I filled the bin most of the way as a practice but, now I will continue to avoid that for another reason.

[Will Blick]

I would have never guessed faster bag changes solve the problem.... obviously CV has dealt with this before.

BTW, despite this new issue, I have NO regrets with my 20" PM Byrd decision... the thing eats hardwoods like warm knife through butter :-)

Fast, quiet and clean boards... gotta lower the rollers to .001" though (not easy, very coarse adjustment threads).... otherwise it snipes

[Noah Katz]

My first thought was, with no resistance on the exhaust, and the Byrd planer is a short duct run, its possible too much FPM = shavings not wanting to settle while in the cyclone as there is too much suction pulling the shavings upward... ?

You could test this by restricting the airflow and see what happens.

[mreza Salav]

I'm late to this thread but I have experienced similar problem in my mini-cyclone shop-vac and shavings of hand planes; almost all of them get into the
filter compartment and I'm pretty sure there is no leak.
As mentioned earlier, for some pieces where the ratio of size to weight is very large the air resistance becomes very large w.r.t. the weight so they'll
follow the air instead of dropping down. I am willing to bet that if you try to suck a bunch of feather with any cyclone systems all of them will end-up in
the filter compartment.

[Tom Gerken]

I also recently bought a new planer with helical head. I can only fill the bag about half way before it starts to fly up into the filter. Never had this problem with the "traditional" blade planer. The shape, size, weight of the chips seems to the cause.

None the less.....LOVE the planer.

[Dan Hintz]

James suggested changing bags at 50-60% full...this did the trick...with empty bags, the spiral shavings settled.... still not like conventional dust....
Can you make your collector any deeper? That should have the same effect...