Cyclone Filter Care

[Mark Rakestraw]

This is mostly a "don't do what I did" story, with a bit of "what now?" at the end. I moved in to a new shop space last May and set up my cyclone and dust collection. At my old shop I just vented outside but here I didn't have that option and needed the filter stack. I bought a new Clearvue CVMax unit with the upgraded filter option. All was going well until this winter when I noticed more dust in the air and plugged sinuses so I bought the Dylos and it confirmed that my air quality was lousy (750-1500). My first thought was I wasn't letting the dust collector run enough, in part because I don't like the noise. I went ahead and walled in my cyclone and compressor with a staggered opening and hung fiberglass basement insulation inside the walls with the fiberglass installed to inside to absorb the sound. The air quality continued to deteriorate, reaching levels of 3-5000 while running the cyclone. I started leaving it on even when I wasn't producing dust thinking it should work as an air filter to bring the particulate count down. It didn't. My next (and what perhaps should have been my first) step was to check for leaks around the filters. I found a couple small spots between the top of the filter stack, but fixing them did not improve things. Now I'm puzzled.:confused: I called Clearvue and other than checking for leaks they didn't off much more guidance. Tech support was focused on leaks from the connection between the cyclone and the collection barrel. I know that would impede separation and put more junk into the filters, but fail to understand how that would let more junk [U]through[U] the filters. At any rate my seals seem to be good. They did send me info on sound insulating (I had mentioned I wanted to do that so I could run the cyclone more to filter the air) but for that to be useful I first have to get the unit to filter the air.:cool: I thought perhaps I had the wrong filters somehow so I called Wynn to ask how I could confirm that I did indeed have the nano filters. (I do have the right ones) I think I was speaking directly to Dick Wynn, and his first question was "When was the last time you cleaned your filters?" Since I hadn't noticed reduce suction at the machines and had never seen anything in the clean out box my answer was "I never have". :o Rather stupid of me I suppose, in retrospect, no doubt there is something in the manual about doing so--but there was a lot going on with moving and setting up the new shop. Given 8 months of operation which included some solid surface work he advised me they would be packed solid and the best route to go would be to dismantle the filter stack so I could really clean them out well.

Since I wasn't sure if I had caused permanent damage to the filters or not (so much constant back pressure that they were compromised?) I decided I would order two new filters to have on hand before I dismantled the system. If the filters turn out to still be good I will either use them to make an ambient air cleaner or add another filter stack to the cyclone.

The new filters arrived so I pulled the old ones off last Friday. I got close to 10 gallons of fines our of them.:eek: I installed the new filters, adapting the outlet and clean out base to use the flanges (I think I like them better with the flanges than without) and got the system up and running again. Air quality is better, but the saga isn't over. When I put the Dylos at in the doorway to the cyclone room I'm still getting readings in the 450-500 range while the shop itself is in the 1000 range. I'm fairly confident the new filters aren't letting that through, but it's coming out of the exposed fiberglass and consists of both the fiberglass and the dust that had accumulated in there earlier. I see in a previous thread about sound insulation that I should cover the fiberglass to contain the fibers. Dale recommends cloth as it will contain the dust yet allow the sound to be absorbed instead of just bouncing the sound back off (like Tyvek would?). I'll post a question to that thread also for sources of material to cover.

Update: The particle count coming out of the room is now down to 275. Maybe the loose stuff is gradually diminishing. I'll let it run the day and see how it fairs. Sorry about the upside down and sideways pics, they didn't look that way on my computer :confused: 283178283179283180