Air mover/carpet blower dust collector conversion?

[Luke Hospadaruk]

My basement shop is desperately needing some dust collection.

I'm wondering about converting a second-hand air mover (aka carpet dryer, aka blower) into a dust collector.

Has anyone ever done this before? It seems like the fan generally has the air moving qualities needed for a decent dust collector, I would imagine that putting it between a chip separator and a filter bag would meet most of my needs.

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts or experience with this.

[Art Mann]

It would take a very large "squirrel cage" type blower to create enough vacuum to do much good as a dust collector. On the other hand, I built an air filter out of such a blower that uses high efficiency HVAC filters to remove a lot of the dust floating around in the air. I doubt if it is as effective as a commercial unit but it does make a big difference and and the price was right.