First of MANY DC questions

[Keith Starosta]

A little birdy told me that 'SANTA' is going to drop a HF 2HP dust collector down my chimney for Christmas this year (actually, I accidentally happened upon the shipping confirmation post card in the mailbox the other day. OOPS! :D) This is to be my first, and hopefully not last, DC unit in my posession. Much like many other members of the Creek, my shop is housed in about 97% of our two-car attached garage. I plan to eventually run all of my ducting on the ceiling, with drops to the appropriate areas around the shop. My question is, will this Harbor Freight 2HP unit have enough suction to support the use of 6" PVC throughout most of the runs? I would of course bring that down to 4" as close to the tool as possible, but from all accounts, the use of 6" piping makes a HUGE difference.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Keith

[Chris Padilla]

A little birdy told me that 'SANTA' is going to drop a HF 2HP dust collector down my chimney for Christmas this year (actually, I accidentally happened upon the shipping confirmation post card in the mailbox the other day. OOPS! :D) This is to be my first, and hopefully not last, DC unit in my posession. Much like many other members of the Creek, my shop is housed in about 97% of our two-car attached garage. I plan to eventually run all of my ducting on the ceiling, with drops to the appropriate areas around the shop. My question is, will this Harbor Freight 2HP unit have enough suction to support the use of 6" PVC throughout most of the runs? I would of course bring that down to 4" as close to the tool as possible, but from all accounts, the use of 6" piping makes a HUGE difference.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Keith


From what I read and understand, I doubt it but as for most things, it really depends on your expectations and needs and desires. If you haven't already, thoroughly read and re-read and re-re-read Bill Pentz's excellent DC website:

Bill's DC Page (http://cnets.net/~eclectic/woodworking/cyclone/index.cfm)

Basically, I'd like to be able to suck the chrome off a trailer hitch so I am "in process" of gathering the cyclone, blower housing, impeller, and motor from Bill's site. He and Clarke Echols have put a kit together of Bill's design. So far, I have the cyclone in hand...Clarke is working to get me the blower housing. Sheldons Engineering firm in Ontario is shipping me the impeller (the "material handling" kind), and I am getting the Leeson motor all set-up per Bill's design. Everything you need (save the ca$h! :D ) is on Bill's pages.

Chris

[Jim Becker]

I have to be honest, Keith, a friend of mine has that DC in his shop and it's "OK" for basic chip collection but I doubt it will work well with a lot of duct work. You will immediately need new filter bags (you can almost see through the ones that come with it). Changing them to high quality bags from American Filter Fabric or similar will not only help your filtration but also boost performance. Try to keep the duct work you install to the most basic plan that is functional for your shop...if you have some tools that can easily move for use, consider having them share a port that is closer to the DC. Remember, you can't go by the "specifications" of these machines as listed by the vendor...they are quite dubious. But it will help you keep things a lot cleaner and that's a good thing with those nice young folks in the house now! (Be sure to thank "Santa" big time, too... :D )

[John Weber]

You should be fine, if you keep the runs as simple as possible and more importantly replace the stock bags with low micro bags (maybe $80ish). A dust system doesn't need to be the most expensive tool in the shop to be effective.

John

[John Christiansen]

A little birdy told me that 'SANTA' is going to drop a HF 2HP dust collector down my chimney for Christmas this year (actually, I accidentally happened upon the shipping confirmation post card in the mailbox the other day. OOPS! :D) This is to be my first, and hopefully not last, DC unit in my posession. Much like many other members of the Creek, my shop is housed in about 97% of our two-car attached garage. I plan to eventually run all of my ducting on the ceiling, with drops to the appropriate areas around the shop. My question is, will this Harbor Freight 2HP unit have enough suction to support the use of 6" PVC throughout most of the runs? I would of course bring that down to 4" as close to the tool as possible, but from all accounts, the use of 6" piping makes a HUGE difference.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Keith

I received and installed my HF dust collector about two months ago.

They shorted me a few nuts and bolts, but after twisting off a couple of the ones that did come with it, I tossed them all and used my own anyway. There's no mechanical aptitude required at all to assemble it. I guess that's why I didn't document the assembly and post it to my site. Just look at the parts and put it together. You have to anyway unless you can read chinglish.

There is a cross wire located in the intake port of the impeller housing. Remove it!! It will only catch large pieces of wood that get down/up/over to it and then continue to clog up until it's plugged and wont pull anything. DAMHIKT.

I can't speak to the option of using 6" pipe as I installed mine using two 26' runs of 4" S+D. It collects very well and other than the one clog created by that cross thingy they built into it, i've not had any complaints about it's function.

I have no intention of replacing the bags that came with it, they are just fine. If you're going to be using this in your house where you have other peoples, especially childrens, health to concern yourself with, then maybe you should consider finer bags. Myself? I don't give a rip about that fine dust business, if I did I'd have to quit my job, you wouldn't believe the crap I deal with every day. I bought the collector to collect chips etc. that come off my planer, jointer, router and all the other big mess creating tools in the shop. And it performs that function very well.

I'm not extremely optimistic about the longevity of the oriental motor on the thing, but who knows? I've seen a couple on campus last for years with continual light duty, and others give up the second time they were turned on.

All in all, It was, IMO a huge bang for the buck.

[Keith Starosta]

Thanks, guys! I appreciate the feedback. My reasons for wanting to put a DC into my small shop are twofold, and quite obvious. First, I'd like to eliminate as much of the fine dust as possible, as I have three small children in the house. After a first pass through Bill P's site several months ago, I got "scared straight" on the whole concept of dust collection. Secondly, I'm tired of sloshing around through piles of sawdust. I like the way that Matt Woodworth states it on his site, how in the beginning, it was kind of cool to have sawdust around the shop. Now, I'd like to eliminate as much as possible.

Being that my space is relatively small, I'm sure that I will be able to keep the runs fairly short. That word, however, is somewhat subjective. What would you consider to be short? My garage is 20'x20'x11'. I've noticed other folks that are running a smaller, 2HP DC system are utilizing the 6" PVC.

Any more opinions? Thanks!

Keith