gorgeous old dust collector blower... now what?

[Alex Jacobson]

I just picked up a beautiful cast iron dust collector blower from my uncle with a 1/2 hp motor, as well as a 3hp 3ph motor if the smaller one doesn't do the trick.

Now, I'm trying to figure out what's the easiest way to get it up and running. I need to build a simple separator and get a filter bag for the outlet (6").

I've found plenty of advice about the separator, but am having trouble finding the right type of filter bag to hook up to it. Can anyone give me a suggestion for where to find one?

Is the 1/2 hp motor going to do the trick or should I set up the 3hp motor to begin with? I'm primarily going to be using it hooked up to my table saw (dewalt 746).

Thanks!

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[Art Mann]

I don't think the half horsepower motor will do the job very well. Even the really small single stage dust collectors utilize at least one horsepower motors. Most are 1 1/2 or more.

[Keith Outten]

No filters, no bags, no performance drop and you save money and your lungs.
Cut a hole in the wall and blow the dust into a chip box outside.

[Alex Jacobson]

No filters, no bags, no performance drop and you save money and your lungs.
Cut a hole in the wall and blow the dust into a chip box outside.

Wish I could! I'm in an industrial building and not sure my neighbors or landlord would be all that happy about that!

[Wade Lippman]

Sell it as an antique and buy a dust collector.
If it is made for .5hp, 3hp will not do anything on it.

[Thomas Canfield]

You will need to determine somewhat the blower characteristics such as rpm, capacity, and horsepower required to get the proper motor and belt drive installed. The pulley would seem to indicate a fairly large motor for the multi-sheave pulley. Had it been in use before you got it? You definitely have a good size project ahead of you to use that blower.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

That is a striking beast. Would be fun to play with. If I had it I would put a bigger motor, the pulley is a good clue as to what it needs, real belts and use a somewhat scientific approach to get an idea of what it's capable of. I'm guessing it will be noisy, not as efficient as a modern design, and rather wanting in bearings, but likely quite adequate to move dust out. It will also have a good story and character that the new stuff can't match. Any idea of it's previous uses?

[Michael W. Clark]

I would start by contacting these people.
http://americanblowercorp.com/

Just guessing, but I bet it is a pressure blower (high pressure / low CFM), since it has the cast housing.

[Curt Harms]

It sort of looks like a blower I recall being used to provide air to coal fired blacksmith's forge. The motor in that case was variable speed.

[Jeff Duncan]

Blowers like that can also be used for transferring dust from a rotary air lock, (which would be located under a cyclone), into a storage container. As the others mentioned already, if the fan is designed to be run by a 1/2 hp motor, it's probably not going to do a lot for dust collection purposes.

good luck,
JeffD

[Robert Payne]

As Jeff Duncan has suggested, this style of blower is used for moving concentrated dust -- in essence it is designed more like a positive displacement pump than most fans and will have almost no static pressure loss since its blades [I suspect] conform closely to the shape of the fan's housing. It will also be very noisy since its blades will compress the air and act like a siren once it is up to speed. I agree with others that it is not a good choice -- you'd be better off with a more modern dust collector fan design. In my prior career, we used dedicated fans for chemical fume hood exhausts that had tight impeller designs to insure constant fume exhaust velocities at the expense of increased sound generation (in a word, they roared!).

[Alex Jacobson]

You will need to determine somewhat the blower characteristics such as rpm, capacity, and horsepower required to get the proper motor and belt drive installed. The pulley would seem to indicate a fairly large motor for the multi-sheave pulley. Had it been in use before you got it? You definitely have a good size project ahead of you to use that blower.

I agree. I haven't been able to find any technical info so far regarding ideal rpm/hp but the pulley block on the motor leads me to believe it was a pretty serious motor driving it at one time.

My uncle had it hooked up to the 1/2hp motor, and at one time was using it as a DC, but later as an exhaust fan for his darkroom. I'm sure the little dayton motor wasn't original, as they are clearly from different eras.

I hooked up his 3hp motor, but it is only 1740 rpm, not nearly fast enough to run this effectively. I had thought about swapping out the pulleys to increase rpms, but that might be a fruitless effort.

I understand that this may not be the most effective or efficient method of DC, but it seems like a fun challenge!

[Alex Jacobson]

I would start by contacting these people.
http://americanblowercorp.com/

Good point, I'll try to give them a call sometime and see if I can get any more info on it. The picture on the website area really cool! Love seeing all that old iron and steel.

[Mike Cutler]

The blower, most likely, wasn't designed to be run on a 1/2 hp., 120 vac motor. That type of motor just isn't standard in an industrial environment. It was probably originally powered off a 3-5 hp, 3 phase, 480vac motor.

It would only take an hour or so to figure out if it will work, and based on it's diameter, which looks to be about 18", I'm betting it will do just fine.