Dust collector advice

[Spike Sipe]

So my little shop has a compound miter saw, table saw, bandsaw, lathe, router table, and various hand tools. I've decided that my next step needs to be a better dust collection solution. What I'm not sure about is whether I should buy the legendary harbor freight dust collector now and slowly kludge and upgrade it into something awesome, or save up and buy a Laguna C Flux 1 get back to work.

On the HF side, I can get it and set it up now and upgrade to cyclone and cartridge filter later. On the laguna side, I can have a great system that does what I want out of the box, with no worries of voiding warranties or botching up upgrades.

I know its ultimately my decision, but opinions from more experienced hands would be nice.

[Cary Falk]

I guess it depends on how long it will take you to save. If you are going to end up with the Laguna I would just buy the HF and do no upgrades to it. You will never get your time and money back out of it when you sell it. I would look on CL and see if anybody has a 1.5hp DC for sale on the cheap. I bought a jet 1.5hp on CL. I then bought a 3hp Jet on CL and added grizzly canisters to it. Canisters are a pain if you don't have a separator of some sort in front of it. I should have left the felt bags on it. I eventually sold it and moved to a Grizzly 3hp cyclone. Sold the 3hp for what I had in it but lost money on the canisters. The 3 hp Jet would hold 2x the amount the chips than the cyclone which I really liked.

[Charles Lent]

A Harbor Freight dust collector with a Super Dust Deputy ahead of it makes a pretty good combination for a small shop. The Super Dust Deputy will separate out almost all of the saw dust and chips, keeping your filter bags on the dust collector fairly clean and nearly full flow.

Charley

[Spike Sipe]

Buying both would be a hard sell to the wife. CL and the Facebook marketplace for tools are pretty scarce in my area.

As far as time spent saving.... Hard to say. Depends on how much time I can get in my shop making projects I can sell. With 50+ hours a week at my real job, that's not easy...

[Carlos Alvarez]

I've been creeping up in DC quality over a couple decades. Starting with the HF, then adding a trash can cyclone, then adding cartridge filters, etc etc. Then I went to a Powermatic 3HP dual can. And now, I have what I should have just done to start with. And my choice was between the 2HP Laguna or this, but in the end, I decided that having the DC outside was the best option. I bought a use 3HP motor/blower/housing, the metal Oneida cyclone, and put it all together myself with no filters, since it's outside. I'm SO happy, and wish I'd done this long ago.

Don't start with the HF unless you have to for cash reason. It's crap. You can put a lot of lipstick on that pig, but eventually you'll notice it's still a pig. I try to buy the most optimal solution up front, if I can at all afford it, because living with lesser solutions is crazy if you're going to eventually upgrade anyway.

[Spike Sipe]

This is where I get frustrated. Half the people say the HF is good, the other half say it's crap. Somebody's got to be wrong here...

[andy bessette]

Don't waste your money on cheap crap. Continue to live without dust collection until you can do the job right once.

[Larry Frank]

Decide for yourself by looking at "real" test results like Wood Magazine has published. Do not believe what the mfg puts in his specs as many are over rated.

Also decide if you want to spend a lot of time modifying a HF dust collector. I have been waiting for someone to do a reasonable job measuring the HF with all the modifications.

If you are looking for people's opinions you get what you get. You should look for facts about performance.

[Ben Rivel]

This is where I get frustrated. Half the people say the HF is good, the other half say it's crap. Somebody's got to be wrong here...
I think the answer to that has more to do with the amount of money said people have to spend on such things. I own a 3HP Oneida V-3000 with metal ducting run to all my stationary tools in a 1.5 car garage shop and I didnt even consider anything less after doing my research. But that setup was at about the end of MY budget. If my budget had been a fraction of that, I would have gone with the HF blower and whatever else I could afford. It's all relative. Some just choose to talk down products they can afford far greater than, and some do not. As with everything else on the internet, take it with a grain of salt and do your own THOROUGH research.

[Chris Parks]

What you are proposing is buying two dust extraction systems instead of one and put in twice the work to install them.

[Richard Gonzalez]

Save up and be ready to move fast when you see a good deal. I found a 5hp Oneida cyclone for $200 at a barn sale!

[Ben Rivel]

What you are proposing is buying two dust extraction systems instead of one and put in twice the work to install them.
Ha! I love it! That's a GREAT way of looking at it!

[john lawson]

This is where I get frustrated. Half the people say the HF is good, the other half say it's crap. Somebody's got to be wrong here...

You need to look at this in a different way. First you need to decide what level of dust collection you need or want. Second design the system around that goal. That will tell you all you need to know about what you need. Where you find it and how much you pay is up to you. You are already getting some good advice.

Do this, spend at least 6--8 hours on Bill Pentz website researching dust and blowers/cyclones. From that you will be driven to either practice dust control or chip collection, they really are two different things. Chip collection is pretty cheap, dust control is not. Having said that, if you are patient you can buy a good cyclone and filter for 1/3 to 1/2 the price of new. I bought a clearvue setup off Craigslist for $500 including a good bit of piping, flex hose and gates. I did lots of searches and when I found what I wanted I sent the guy and email and bought it within hours of his posting.

Many, many people have gone through what you are going through and that's the reason you keep getting the advice you have received here.

[Chris Parks]

Straight off the show room floor any Asian bag/filter type dust extractor is a failure at removing the fine dust from the workshop and you won't find out how to modify it and fix its shortcomings here. If you want to achieve true fine dust collection then you need a good cyclone and preferably if the climate you live in allows exhaust it to the outside. Running a cyclone back through filters is the next best thing. Anyone who recommends a generic DE and tells you it achieves good results without modification is not doing you any favours and wasting your money because every single one of them leaks dust.

[Ben Rivel]

Straight off the show room floor any Asian bag/filter type dust extractor is a failure at removing the fine dust from the workshop and you won't find out how to modify it and fix its shortcomings here. If you want to achieve true fine dust collection then you need a good cyclone and preferably if the climate you live in allows exhaust it to the outside. Running a cyclone back through filters is the next best thing. Anyone who recommends a generic DE and tells you it achieves good results without modification is not doing you any favours and wasting your money because every single one of them leaks dust.
Exactly. Any dust collector what uses a cloth bag as a filter period isnt something Id consider a good dust collector. Those bags dont filter out the fine particles we dont want to be breathing and they just distribute them all over your work space. If it doesnt have a .5 micron or less pleated exhaust filter I would suggest not even considering it as an option. But, funds dictate the choice most of the time. One does what one can.

[Carlos Alvarez]

This is where I get frustrated. Half the people say the HF is good, the other half say it's crap. Somebody's got to be wrong here...

Nobody has to be wrong, and it's not just crap vs. good. I should have used different words. The HF may be "good enough" for you, maybe not. It was not for me, and many other people. We all work differently, have different tools and spaces, and different expectations. Objectively, we can say that the HF doesn't move as much air as the larger/better ones, and that having a 5" backbone is better than 4". The HF just can't maintain velocity in 5" tubing. So you make your choices from there based on what you can spend. I disagree on "don't buy anything if you can't afford the best." I really couldn't buy more at that time, and am glad I did *something* to start with. I just wish that once I could afford it, I'd upgraded sooner.

[Peter Christensen]

I think Chris was saying that because they leak through many of the gasket joints they all are bad. If not at first they will eventually. Just look at all the little dust plumes where the leaking dust leaves a streak on the metal. All the systems people have showed me had them and they were proud on how good their DC worked and that was not taking into account the layers of dust on every surface in their shop.

[andy bessette]

I found my 3hp Oneida cyclone used/like new for $1,000 with a bunch of blast gates. Haven't set it up yet.

[Chris Parks]

If forced to use a bag/filter type dust extractor put it outside the workshop. There is a whole forum detailing all the problems and I am not going to repeat several years of findings here because it is impossible. Go to the Australian site and start reading. Yes a 3hp Asian DE can be made to work but the US climate would make that difficult in the winter for a lot of users. Peter would back me up on the quality of the work that has gone into finding out how to go about setting up DE in a shed and making it work.

[Larry Soscia]

I have also read good reviews about the harbor freight DC and understand the limitations. My question is that HF lists two 2hp dust collectors,one at 20 a and one at 15 a. Straight amperage to watts to hp says that the 20 a will produce about 3/4 hp more. Does anybody know which motor the reviews referenced? Additionally, does anyone know which motor may be the better choice?

[ray grundhoefer]

start watching online auctions around your area. used ones go for next to nothing sometimes . I picked up a 3 hp torit cyclone for $5.00 last year.
Only problem is its still not installed and running, oh well maybe after christmas I will get it going.