Super Dust Deputy install

[James Nugnes]

Getting a new Super Dust Deputy to go with my DC system. I actually really had myself going for a bit as I could not figure out why folks were having issues with some of the metal hose adapters Oneida offers with some folks having to or trying to crimp them and others not. But at least I have figured out the differences.

I have a 1.5 HP DC and it has a 6" inlet. It also came with a Y fitting for the inlet that has two 4" branches and a cover for one of them if you decide not to use one of the branches.

So it is now clear to me that some folks are going 4" hose and two of those 5" to 4" adapters one on the inlet side of the SDD and one actually sort of jury rigged into the outlet side of the SDD with 4" hose then going to their DC. Others must be going 4" hose on the inlet side of the SDD and 6" hose from the SDD to the DC.

In my case, I can do either one. I can go 4" hose from the tool to the SDD and using Onieda's 6" collar ( a part that does not have to be modified in any way) I can use 6" hose out of the SDD and directly into the DC discarding the 4" Y branch that came with my DC. Conversely, I can go 4" hose on either side of an SDD both into the SDD from the tool and out to the DC. In this case I would be using one of those 5" to 4" adapters on the 6" outlet of the SDD and I would keep my Y branch fitting on the DC.

It would seem to me that 4" hose into the SDD and 6" hose out of it to the DC is a neater installation keeping no jury rigged or extra parts in the system. In addition I don't know this but I am guessing that if you use 4" hose into the SDD and 6" hose out of it, you will encourage more chips and larger pieces of material to stay in the bin under the SDD instead of going up the hose to the impeller and eventually the filter and bag of the DC.

It is pretty easy to see that 4" hose in and 6" hose out of the SDD would be a neater installation. But does my other comment about encouraging more material to get down into and stay down in the bin under the SDD make sense as well?

[Mike Chalmers]

I am not really answering your question, but I'll give you my set up. I use 5" hose into the SDD. I use a 5" to 4" adapter at the tool. my undestanding is that this gives better air flow than reducing to 4" right away.

I do know, from my own experience, that my setup with a 2hp DC unit with cartridge filter works great.

[James Nugnes]

I thought before jumping into a Super Dust Deputy with both feet I should at least give the Woodstock W1049 lid I have had sitting around a try. I had not really intended cutting anything tonight as we are all about snow removal lately. My garage looks more like a mini-DPW than a place where any woodworking might be done.

While I was not making any sawdust tonight because I really have to move some stuff of this DPW stuff around for that I was surprised at what I saw. Initially I did not really even try to create much of a seal at the inlet and outlet although I had put some material around the inside of the lid. It looked like there was a reasonable seal but I could see where air was escaping. So I took some sealing material and I sealed around the hose inlet and outlet. I have good quality 4" hose which is apparently critical with these things. I had read that it is really all about the seal to get these to work for you.

Anyway, after I sealed the inlet and outlet I turned on the DC. The seal was so good that the expandable hose on the DC side contracted from about 6' down to 3' very quickly and I could pick the whole 30 gal. can up by the lid itself. As soon as I turned the DC off the hose on the DC side expanded back out to where it had been previously. Was really an odd thing to watch.

At any rate, maybe this thing is sufficient for my purposes. Clearly I do have a good seal. It would be nice to be able to use a full 30 gal can as regardless of what you are using for a bin, once it is half full, the efficiency goes down and you end up with more material going past your impeller and filter and into your DC bag, just the thing you are trying to avoid in using a Separator.

Does anybody know if these Woodstock W1049 lids are in fact all about achieving a seal? I would like to try it today. But we are gong to get buried AGAIN. We have been buried under about 48" of snow in the last ten days or so. Looks like maybe 10" more a possibility for Thursday.

[Kent A Bathurst]

The seal was so good that the expandable hose on the DC side contracted from about 6' down to 3' very quickly and I could pick the whole 30 gal. can up by the lid itself. As soon as I turned the DC off the hose on the DC side expanded back out to where it had been previously.

We have been buried under about 48" of snow in the last ten days or so. Looks like maybe 10" more a possibility for Thursday.

You may not have enough free air flowing in the system - dust systems are designed to have a certain amount of air flowing through the plumbing, and this collapsed flex hose indicates you might be starving it. There can be such a thing as too much suction to a single line/tool - the volume through the active pipe may not be enough to keep the waste stream in suspension in your example.

You don't want it dropping out of suspension, especially in the "corrugated" flex hose - that quickly starts to build up. You should call Oneida about this - I've always found them to be very helpful.

On the snow thing - where you located? Boston environs or thereabouts? Buffalo? Got a good quality snow blower, do we? :D

We had a great blower back in the day - electric start, driven rear wheels, big engine. Gave it - literally gave it - to our best friends catty-corner across from us in Michigan - then hightailed it to Georgia. Trying to sound sympathetic here, but failing............... ;)

[James Nugnes]

Well it would be remarkably easy to back the seal off of the system. All I would have to do is remove the sealing material (strips) around the junctions of the flex hose inlet and outlet and Walla........back to the seal characteristics it had before I put the sealing strips on in which case, I could still pick up the whole can by just lifting up on the lid since when the DC is on it presses the lid down onto the rim of the bin. However without those seals around the inlet and outlet there is enough air leaking out of the system that the flex hose on the DC side only compresses an inch or two, as opposed to a couple of feet. I guess I have read more about people trying to get as much of a seal everywhere in their system they can as opposed to trying to dial the seal to a particular level. Is there such a thing as too much of a seal? I would have thought that lack of seal would starve the system of air because too much of it would be leaking out of the system. Adding the sealing material around the inlet and outlet improved the sealing characteristics of the system considerably and that is when the hose on the DC side started to compress when the DC was running.

I am well north of Boston.There was so much snow piled under my rear deck on Tuesday morning early (3:00AM) that it was only about 5' short of reaching the height of the deck itself. I had to dig out the posts the deck rests on as I did not want 10' of packed snow just pressing in around those posts.

[glenn bradley]

In general, reduce as close to the machine as possible. Do not reduce from the inlet to the cyclone on towards the impeller. JMHO.

[James Nugnes]

If I am going to keep the current setup maybe I should try metal pipe from the separator lid to the DC as it is the flex from the separator that contracts when I turn on the DC and expands back again when I turn it off. There is not much space there and it will be hard to rig something solid between those two spots. There is not room to toss the separator under the DC or on the same platform with the DC and the DC inlet is just a few inches off the floor facing out as opposed to down. I guess another option would be that stay-put stuff....made from a poly resin but designed to be bent into a position that it holds. To be honest I did not see this one coming. I figured that I was going to be pretty close to the max distance of hose that the 1.5 HP DC would support and that too much seal/too much energy being produced out of the DC producing that much draw on the flex hose between the Separator and the DC would be the last of my worries.

I could come out of the Separator into a 4" to 6" adapter and then run 6" over to the DC. That might allow me to keep everything sealed up but create more volume of air moving on the DC side. Anybody think that is the right step to take?

I am also beginning to wonder if I would have been better off with something like the Laguna 1.5 HP mobile unit....completely self contained, integrated separator with canister filter, runs off house current....not that pricey either. Probably less power than the DC that I have, with fewer expansion possibilities. But I am never going to have a shop that has me using more than one piece of dust producing equipment at any one time. To be honest though, I am not sure how I feel about any of the designs that provide such a little amount of space between the Separator and the DC and impeller itself. Is there more risk that something you really want falling into the separator heads the other way? Heck I don't know. I am worried about dust in the air that I breadth. But there is not a dust collection system made that does not carry with it the inherent risk that something hot, possibly metal will come into contact with a whole bunch of fine wood dust.

[James Nugnes]

Been reading a good deal from the Bill Pentz website. To hear him tell it, we are all kidding ourselves if we can't equip our shops with at least 6" ducting, preferably smooth bore PVC and even that appears to just be a different version of kidding ourselves. But I don't doubt him. It makes sense that you would need a very specific degree of air volume to suspend the really fine dust particulars and move them through a dust collection system. Again unless we are dealing with those we are not doing much more than keeping the floors of our shops clean as it is the really fine stuff that is most dangerous to our lungs. Seems to me we are all spending one heck of a lot of money when a good broom will do as far as what we are really accomplishing.

That said, I am likely to try something like 6" PVC from the Separator to the DC and see if that doesn't give me enough air volume to keep the fine stuff suspended and dealt with either at the Separator or in the DC bag itself.

In my case I am only trying to capture the dust from one tool. I really don't make much dust in my woodworking activity as I am a woodcarving mostly using hand tools wherever I can. In truth that has turned out to be most challenging from a dust collection perspective as there is not much designed for somebody that uses one large power tool at a time. So creating a ducting system is frankly ridiculous. Even Bill himself can be pretty critical of them regardless of how impressive they might look. I think I have enough Dust Collector to do the job. I need flex hose at least from the tool to a Separator. I am going to try to deal with the air volume issue by making some changes from the Separator to the DC. As I mentioned in the last post, I think I will try rigid 6" diameter conduit of some sort from the Separator to the DC. I have to come out of the Separator with something 4" diameter but I can likely adapt to 6" right there and then the short run of 6" down to the DC impeller. I can attach directly to the DC with 6" at that point. 6" flex might work but it does appear at least from what I can gather that the only real shot I have at dealing with the fine particles would be to increase the diameter from Separator to DC to 6" with something.

I have to admit I really wonder how many of these systems that we have installed in small shops are really doing what we think they are doing. I suspect far fewer than we want to believe. I think what I find somewhat disturbing is that the woodworking "industry" is doing very little IMO to actually facilitate a healthy environment. It appears to me that it just looks like an opportunity to sell a bunch of stuff without providing anything like the technical support to actually make that stuff work like it actually needs to work to result in a healthy environment. Even buying a Bill Peltz Cyclone does not appear to me at any rate to offer any guarantees as this dust collection stuff is all about the air volume and the ability to suspend fine dust particles through the system from tool to bag. All the fancy stuff we buy makes a bunch of noise and makes us feel good but in truth, unless the air volume can be maintained at the right level from tool to bag.....a good broom would appear to be just about as efficient.

[Mike Chalmers]

How many people work in a risk free environment? What level of risk is considered safe? We make these judgment calls every day. While the research you did may not be wrong, it has to be considered alongside other factors, such as cost and existing health. People that are allergic to nuts should not eat them, they may die. Does this mean that young ones who have never been exposed to nuts should never try them, just in case?
Risk management, not all or nothing.

[James Nugnes]

Risk management is the point exactly. While this part of the discussion is somewhat academic, we are in many cases spending gobs of money on systems not likely to dissipate what are by far the most harmful particles. According to the experts it requires a very precise measure of air volume to suspend those fine particles through the system successfully. Yet from a pure health perspective, those are the particles that are both most damaging and most likely to reach our lungs. If we can't get those, the whole thing seems a little like switching from regular cigarettes to Lites. You can call switching to Lites risk management if you like. I think you would be closer to kidding yourself.

It is not like this stuff is inexpensive either. I for example suspect that I will be successful eventually but only because my system is so painfully simplistic. I am not trying to manage air volume through multiple drops into a main line with a series of automatic gates and various other clap trap along the way. But even with a system remarkable only for its simplicity, I could have had a decent table saw for the money spent when all said and done. Based on reading the material provided by experts, a rather small club of which I am not a member I surmise and submit that there are very few smaller or home shop systems able to capture and suspend those particles, the very particles we should actually be after.

As for the industry, how many ads do we see suggesting pictorially that 4" hose is just the ticket when in fact it is very unlikely that 4" hose is even marginally successful to the task at hand. I would suspect that there is millions of $$ of dust collection equipment out there being fed by .......4" hose which if you read enough of this stuff you would surmise should only be used at the tool end only and even there is suspect.

And then of course there is the risk management kicker in all of this, the chance that static build up causes a shock maybe not sufficient to cause an explosion but that might give the user a nasty jolt while he is already engaged in the use of equipment the business end of which includes teeth supported by sufficient power to hack through wood or metal. Might said user end up not quite maintaining control as he is jolted by such a shock? Then of course while static discharge induced explosion in small shops is really a very low risk factor, a hot ember finding its way to a nice fat pile of dust is really much more likely. True, we are keeping our shops cleaner with this stuff but I am not at all convinced that we are doing much more than that. If that is even remotely an accurate description of what we are really accomplishing in many of these systems, they are the most expensive brooms and dustpans anybody ever heard of.

[David Utterback]

Thank you for discussing an important topic for woodworkers. As you have stated, the topic is quite complicated. I took a full semester of ventilation design in grad school. Here are a few basic principles that I would add to this discussion. Smooth rigid pipe is better than flexible coiled hose. I use galvanized stove pipe which is more economical than pvc, I believe. Rigid ducts create less turbulence than coiled flexible tubing which means better laminar flow, more efficient power use, less chance of deposition (clogging) in the duct and greater average duct velocity. Average duct velocity needs to be a minimum of about 3500 feet per minute to prevent settling of particles in horizontal sections of duct work. That means larger diameter ducts, with their lower average velocities (air volume divided by cross-section area), may increase the risk for clogging in horizontal runs. But, larger diameter duct creates less pressure loss for a fixed air volume so energy use is more efficient. All of these differences are marginal for ducts less than 10' long, though.

Also, keep in mind that every elbow, tee and wye induce some turbulence and reduce the average duct velocity for a fixed horsepower on the collector motor. A pre-filter like the ones under discussion also increase resistance to air flow and reduce the volume of air that is pulled by the collector. Ultimately, you have less air entering at the inlet which generally will allow more particles to escape into the shop. The best design for "hoods" at the inlet is another complex topic for another day. Festool has capitalized on this design element.

As far as risks from particulate, the smaller the particles (generally) the more likely they will penetrate the filters on most recirculating air collection filters (like those nearly everyone uses in their shops, including me). Use the most efficient filter (smallest micron number) on the final stage that you can afford if you are concerned about the health risks. The smaller the micron number, though, the greater resistance to air flow for a given filter media. It seems to me that the pleated paper filters are the best available for home shop use. Cyclones would be more reasonable for larger centralized systems and should be followed by a high efficiency filter media if the air is recirculated into the shop.

This turned out a lot longer than I intended. Yet, I hope some of the information is helpful. Bottom line is keep your system as simple, short and direct as possible and use flexible duct primarily to connect your dust generating tool to rigid pipe. If you move your collection system close to each machine as it is being used, most of the factors except particle size are minimized.

Thanks for your patience,
David

[James Nugnes]

Well I have to admit to being somewhat surprised. I had to complete another series of adjustments to my bandsaw and so that got in the way of trying to really look at the dust collection capabilities of my 1.5HP DC attached to a 30 gal. can with a Woodstock W1049 lid. Now I had decided to give the 1049 a try because I had it and it did not make sense to me to just go ahead and roll with the SDD without at least trying a can with a W1049 lid. I sealed up the lid as beast I could and sealed up the inlet/outlet around the 4" hose as best I could. If I keep this separator in place I fully intend going to 6" hose from the can separator to the DC.

Much to my surprise all of the dust from my test cuts ended up in the can. Nothing got to the filter and bag on the DC even with 4" hose on the outlet of the Can Separator. Now while I make a good many chips in my manual, by hand, woodworking efforts, I make power tool dust from my power work. So I was interested to see if the dust from the bandsaw would get bast the can and eventually into the bag on the DC.

This makes for an interesting decision point. I really had no intention at all keeping the Woodstock lid and integrating it and a can into my dust collection efforts. I have had myself pretty well convinced that I make myself a Thien with a 6" outlet into a 6" inlet on my DC or get the complete SDD with its 17 gal. bin. I had not completely eliminated the W1049 with a 6" hose on the outlet from consideration. But it was running a distant 3rd until today. Wondering if today's test cuts shouldn't really push me to building a Thien and spending the money saved from not buying an SDD on some of the other woodworking tools I would like to have or just putting a 6" hose on the outlet of the W1049. I honestly expected to see a bunch of dust make it to the DC bag today, mainly because what do I know. I really just slammed this can and lid thing together to see what would happen.... I sealed it well and paid attention to some DC basics but I can hardly call this some meticulous exercise.

I know people here have transitioned through the 1049 and things like it, some stopping at a Thien with their DC and others going on to an SDD with their DC. What am I missing because I have to be missing something? Would either the Thien or the SDD be more versatile, more able to handle modifications?

I don't have to worry about a heavy dose of wood chips working their way into my power tool usage, It is regular dust and fine dust in my case. Is that why I got the result I got today? Is the W1049 simply well suited to taking care of dust if you do a good job of sealing the lid and the inlet and outlet?

The real dilemma for me now is that with some Oneida discounts, the SDD and its bin were running a solid 1st in my thinking until today. After today unless I can figure out what I am missing, it is running 3rd with a Thien in 1st and just keeping the Woodstock W1048 now in 2nd. Any help would be much appreciated, especially from folks that have worked their way through some of these solutions already.

[James Nugnes]

Just so we or I don't appear to be directing this discussion entirely at cost or savings, one thing I like about either a Thien or the W1049 lid is that you end up with a 30 gal. capacity but the profile is not as tall as an SDD and 17 gal bin and the footprint is about the same. A W1049 does its business above the height of the can rim but only about 7" above and the Thien does its business inside the top of the can at least for the basic Thien, the one I am considering. So you end up with more capacity and less profile in about the same footprint as the SDD dedicated bin. I can make a lid for an SDD but then the profile is much taller even than the SDD with its dedicated bin and I would need much more 6" hose to get to the inlet of my DC.

One more thing....I do have the vacuum accessories for a DC. A DC really does not make a good vacuum but I intended using them just to grab up the stray dust that might accumulate on the floor. But that might result in a few chips of wood sneaking into the system instead of just 100% dust.

[Jim Dwight]

I think either a trash can lid or a Thien will work well for getting chips and coarse dust but will not trap finer dust, like from sanding. I had a Thien in my old shop and still accumulated a LOT of very fine dust all over. I had a cartridge filter that was supposed to get most of the particles down to 1 micron. But I ran the DC with bags for a couple years and may have accumulated the fine dust during that period. I'm planning a super dust deputy on my little 1 hp DC outside with no additional filtration in the new shop. My tools are all set up for 2.5 inch or smaller connections, however, and I really like my shop vacumn with a HEPA filter and dust deputy and may just use it for awhile. I am going to build the cart from Woodsmith for it.

[Phil Thien]

I think either a trash can lid or a Thien will work well for getting chips and coarse dust but will not trap finer dust, like from sanding.

I think it can trap nearly as much fine sanding dust as a conventional cyclone.

But no matter what, it still just isn't enough.

Anyone that thinks they're going to design a system around a large cyclone with 6" ductwork that will catch everything at the tool, as it is produced, is kidding themselves a little. You CAN run the cyclone for 15-30 minutes after using the tools and use it as an air cleaner. But the problem with that is, the dust suspended in the air likely won't be separated and will head straight to the somewhat difficult to clean (and expensive to replace) filter stack.

The key is to augment any system with an air cleaner.

According to the particle counters, shops with 1-1/2 to 2-HP DC systems and a good air cleaner are pretty hard to beat.