Noel Poore
02-12-2013, 9:27 PM
Hi everyone
I have a basement workshop with 92" to the bottom of the joists. I have a table saw (with Shark Guard +4" port), jointer, tabletop planer, bandsaw and midi lathe. My current setup is a Penn State "2hp" bag collector. I run two 4" clear flexible hoses. One goes to the Shark Guard, the other I move to whichever machine I am using. The dust collector sits in the middle of the basement space with the machines around it. Everything can be reached easily with a 10' hose. I also have a Dust Deputy on my shop vac, which I love. We will probably move house in a few years once the children are all through college, and I hope to be able to have a larger shop with actual daylight, so I want to bear that in mind when spending money on dust collection.
I know that the bags on the current collector need to go. Having recently acquired a lathe, I've especially noticed that collecting dust from lathe sanding basically doesn't work - too much dust comes back out of the bags. What I am going backwards and forwards on is the best way to fix this. I could upgrade the current collector with a Wynn filter and add a separator. The cheapest way to do this would be to make a Thien top hat, although the new plastic Super Dust Deputy looks tempting as well. This would mean spending up to about $500. I'm thinking that this would get me something that is good enough for my current situation, but probably wouldn't stretch to a future larger workshop.
So I could consider going for a Grizzly/Oneida/ClearVue cyclone system. A lot more money, but a lot more dust collector as well, which would hopefully be the last collector I need to buy. Given the height constraints of the basement, I would not necessarily plan to install permanent ducting at this stage. Is running a 2/3hp cyclone with flexible hose like I do now a good idea? A big concern I have is noise. Everyone talks about how loud a cyclone is. With the current setup, my wife is happy enough to deal with the noise from the dust collector downstairs by turning up the volume on the TV/iPod/whatever. Anything which makes more noise than my current setup is probably impractical. I see that a number of people have built closets for their cyclones to reduce the noise to something that is acceptable for them. If I ended up having to do that, I would build a closet in the corner of the basement and then would probably run 6" duct to the middle of the basement. The problem with that is that there are hot air heating ducts between the best (in fact, almost the only) place to put the closet and where the woodworking machines are, so running 6" duct underneath those might lead to headroom issues.
I've been turning this over and over in my mind for a couple of months now, and have definitely reached the point of "analysis paralysis" - there does not seem to be a solution which is obviously much better than the others. I've read many of the dust collection posts on sawmillcreek and other web sites, which has given me lots more information, but have not helped me reach a conclusion yet. I have found someone fairly local who is willing to show me their ClearVue so I could get an impression of how noisy it is compared to my current setup, and maybe that will help with one aspect of this decision.
Thoughts and advice appreciated. Hearing about other people's experiences, successes, regrets etc often helps when you can't make up your mind.
Noel
P.S. Sorry for the length of this - I wanted to include the relevant information, and it kind of grew...
I have a basement workshop with 92" to the bottom of the joists. I have a table saw (with Shark Guard +4" port), jointer, tabletop planer, bandsaw and midi lathe. My current setup is a Penn State "2hp" bag collector. I run two 4" clear flexible hoses. One goes to the Shark Guard, the other I move to whichever machine I am using. The dust collector sits in the middle of the basement space with the machines around it. Everything can be reached easily with a 10' hose. I also have a Dust Deputy on my shop vac, which I love. We will probably move house in a few years once the children are all through college, and I hope to be able to have a larger shop with actual daylight, so I want to bear that in mind when spending money on dust collection.
I know that the bags on the current collector need to go. Having recently acquired a lathe, I've especially noticed that collecting dust from lathe sanding basically doesn't work - too much dust comes back out of the bags. What I am going backwards and forwards on is the best way to fix this. I could upgrade the current collector with a Wynn filter and add a separator. The cheapest way to do this would be to make a Thien top hat, although the new plastic Super Dust Deputy looks tempting as well. This would mean spending up to about $500. I'm thinking that this would get me something that is good enough for my current situation, but probably wouldn't stretch to a future larger workshop.
So I could consider going for a Grizzly/Oneida/ClearVue cyclone system. A lot more money, but a lot more dust collector as well, which would hopefully be the last collector I need to buy. Given the height constraints of the basement, I would not necessarily plan to install permanent ducting at this stage. Is running a 2/3hp cyclone with flexible hose like I do now a good idea? A big concern I have is noise. Everyone talks about how loud a cyclone is. With the current setup, my wife is happy enough to deal with the noise from the dust collector downstairs by turning up the volume on the TV/iPod/whatever. Anything which makes more noise than my current setup is probably impractical. I see that a number of people have built closets for their cyclones to reduce the noise to something that is acceptable for them. If I ended up having to do that, I would build a closet in the corner of the basement and then would probably run 6" duct to the middle of the basement. The problem with that is that there are hot air heating ducts between the best (in fact, almost the only) place to put the closet and where the woodworking machines are, so running 6" duct underneath those might lead to headroom issues.
I've been turning this over and over in my mind for a couple of months now, and have definitely reached the point of "analysis paralysis" - there does not seem to be a solution which is obviously much better than the others. I've read many of the dust collection posts on sawmillcreek and other web sites, which has given me lots more information, but have not helped me reach a conclusion yet. I have found someone fairly local who is willing to show me their ClearVue so I could get an impression of how noisy it is compared to my current setup, and maybe that will help with one aspect of this decision.
Thoughts and advice appreciated. Hearing about other people's experiences, successes, regrets etc often helps when you can't make up your mind.
Noel
P.S. Sorry for the length of this - I wanted to include the relevant information, and it kind of grew...