experiences with Nordfab dust collection piping

[bennie blackwell]

I am in the process of designing my first dust collection system and I want to use metal piping available from Nordfab. These products can be purchased from WW Grainger, Grizzly and possibly other places. Nordfab hardware SketchUp files are available from the SketchUp library. I would like to communicate with some members that have experience with Nordfab products. Thanks in advance.

[Darcy Warner]

What about it?

[Bryan Lisowski]

The 2 people I know that have Nordfab ducting love it. Easy to assemble and disassemble if you need to redesign, add or move. Both said for the price, it was a no brainer to have them design the layout.

[Travis Porter]

I have it, and love it, except for the price. I got a bunch of used pipe and fittings when I bought my dust collector, but I have bought fittings, clamps, and blast gates from Nordfab and Oneida.

[Mike Heidrick]

Have it. Love it. Buy my Nordfab parts used or on sale when I can. Its very expensive. Not sure its worth it if you have other major ww tool needs.

[Alan Lightstone]

Have it. Love it. Expensive.

sound familiar?

Have to buy a bunch more for the new shop. Gulp!!

[Scott DelPorte]

Have it in my shop. Also love how easy it is to set up and to make changes. Performs well too. I have sort of built up the system over a period of time as I accumulated machines, so I did not have to buy it all at once.

[bennie blackwell]

I am in the process of designing my first dust collection system and I want to use metal piping available from Nordfab. These products can be purchased from WW Grainger, Grizzly and possibly other places. Nordfab hardware SketchUp files are available from the SketchUp library. I would like to communicate with some members that have experience with Nordfab products. Thanks in advance.

I am inexperienced at posting on this site and I see that I should have been much more specific. Here are some specific questions:

For those that used Nordfab, would you share some pictures?
What was your method of attachment to the ceiling for horizontal runs?
What did you use to attach the piping to a wall? Did you attach directly to a wall or did you attach some kind of furring strip?
What kind of "gotchas" did you encounter? What stupid things should I avoid?

[Mike Kreinhop]

My ducting isn't Norfab, but it is similar construction by Schuko. My house is made of cast in place concrete for all walls and slabs, so turning part of the finished basement into a functional shop was a challenge.

My design started with the dust collection system and included a separate closet for the blower, Oneida cyclone separator, dust bin, Wynn filters, and air compressor. The metal Schuko ducting comes in 1-meter lengths, and I used 120mm diameter ducting for my small shop. I ordered a few of pieces at shorter lengths (no extra cost) in order to fit the system in my shop.

Attachment to the ceiling was time consuming because I had to drill 12mm holes in the reinforced concrete slab for the plastic anchors and M10 lag bolts. I used my Bosch D-tect 150 to identify the location of the rebar in the concrete. The brackets screw onto the bolts and then fitting the ducting is straightforward.

Here are some images showing some of the ducting with the attaching brackets. The sections of duct and fittings are joined with a compression clamp that has a bead of sealing putty along the inner channel. Some of the clamps had a rubber gasket instead of the putty, but both appear to work fine and I can't detect any leaks in the system.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4372/37287769251_e7be2dcc26_c.jpg


https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4443/36618306143_0fa4ec31e1_c.jpg


https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4470/37240927756_208a7e4a8d_c.jpg



I used two clamps for each section of ducting and one clamp for each Y-adapter. The 45 and 90-degree elbows are not attached to the ceiling. In the DC closet, the 90-degree elbow is attached to the wall using one bracket. In all, I used 27 brackets to attach the ducting system. This might be overkill, but the ducting is not coming loose. :)

[bennie blackwell]

Mike: The pictures are great. In my case, most of the ducting will be mounted to the wall because my ceilings are 13 ft high. I want to have my ducting about 7 ft off the floor. My ducting is primarily 6 in (150mm) diameter. Would you have been comfortable mounting some of your ducting on your walls using the same hangers? I will have one pipe run to my table saw that has to be suspended from the ceiling and I can use some kind of cable for that.

[Mike Kreinhop]

Mike: The pictures are great. In my case, most of the ducting will be mounted to the wall because my ceilings are 13 ft high. I want to have my ducting about 7 ft off the floor. My ducting is primarily 6 in (150mm) diameter. Would you have been comfortable mounting some of your ducting on your walls using the same hangers? I will have one pipe run to my table saw that has to be suspended from the ceiling and I can use some kind of cable for that.

The 120mm ducting was the largest I could use because of restrictions in the path to my DC closet. Otherwise, I would have used 150mm ducting and the appropriately sized hangers. The hangers I used work just as well on walls as they do on ceilings. I added more photos showing the bolt and anchor hardware, as well as some close-ups of the hanger.

Here are the boxes for the anchors and bolts:

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Here are the anchors and bolts showing the relative size:

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These are close-ups of a hanger showing how it is attached to the ceiling (or wall) and the hardware to compress the bottom of the hanger into the ducting.

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The two halves of the hanger are identical. The M10 nut on the top piece is attached at the factory with a screw through the hanger and swaged in place. The hole in the bottom half is where the screw would have been if the half was used as a top half.

[Scott DelPorte]

Hi Bennie, Here are a couple pictures showing how the ducting was mounted in my shop. I have 11 ft ceilings and mounted it all using the clamps shown in the first picture. I got the clamps from Nordfab or Grizzly (cant remember) but the threaded rod and hardware for mounting to the wall and ceiling is just stuff from Home Depot. The brackets I used gave me a little adjustability for mounting. Its fairly heavy when several pieces are clamped together, so I more or less had to mount it piece by piece rather than assemble a full trunk, and then mount it all at once. If you have helpers you might be able to mount entire branches all at once.

You asked if there were any "gotcha's" or things to avoid. The pipes are pretty rigid, so you need to work out the angles for the branches so that ducting lines up. Its pretty easy to make "adjustable" ducts so that things line up, but I was lazy (and cheap) in one case and used a black rubber sleeve to join a branch to the trunk at a slight angle. Hope this is helpful.
Scott

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[bennie blackwell]

Scott: This information has been very helpful. Thanks, Ben

[Patrick McCarthy]

Scott, what is the gauge for that is shown in picture 4?
Admittedly ignorant, Patrick

[bennie blackwell]

Scott:
I am trying to reverse engineer your hardware in the closeup picture of the vertical wall mounted duct run.
1. Is your strut 1 5/8"x13/16" 14 gage?
2. Is the threaded rod 1/4" or 3/8" diameter?
3. The green fitting that ties the duct to the strut, could not find that at Home Depot. Is this a single piece of material or is two pieces consisting of a square washer and a spring nut.

Thanks, Ben

[Scott DelPorte]

The gauge is called a magnahelic. It’s just a pressure gauge I have on the return to give me an indication of how much total airflow I have.

The threaded rod is 3/8, and the greenish square thing is just a really thick washer. They sell that channel, along with a bunch of different hardware bits that go with the channel (including the green square washer) so you can build racks and mount things. They have it at our local Home Depot but not sure if they are in every one. If I remember, it was sort of near the electrical supplies.

Does that help?
Thanks
Scott

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[Jim Finn]

When I worked as a sheet metal worker we used a lot of the channel pictured here for mounting duct to the walls. The brands we used were called "Unistrut" and "Superstrut" The 3/8" strut nuts came with or without the spring. Either one works. Pipe fitters also use this type of mounting hardware.

[Mike Heidrick]

You might be surprised at the cost of the springnuts. On the large/deeper unistrut i used regular hardware between large flat washers and was able to get a wrench behind it.

[Mike Heidrick]

Of course this is a nordfab thread.......

[J.R. Rutter]

I bought an auction lot and worked with a local dealer to fill in some parts and get a system design. It is quite rigid when clamped, so I used cable hangers every 10 ft or so. Wall connection could be as basic or as complex as you like. In my commercial space, I just used a wooden furring strip against the wall with steel plumbing strap screwed to it.