The age old question: Is one enough? Dust Collection

[Tim Allaire]

I recently purchased a Delta 50-760, and although it be a big unit for my small shop, is it enough to keep the air clean? Of course my argument (to my wife) is that 1 micron seems to be enough--air quality wise. Am I wrong or is smaller than 1 micron detrimental to your health? Should I break down a buy an ambient air-filter? (not that I would admit that to the little-lady or anything)

Tim

[alex grams]

The smaller the size of the dust, the worse it is for your health.

In regard to 'do you need more', other than your DC, what is the ventilation in your shop area? Does it connect to your house or is it a standalone shop?

[Rob Will]

Tim,
Yes you need an air cleaner because not everything goes into your DC. A lot of dust is thrown into the air at the tool.

Rob

[Tim Allaire]

My shop is stand alone with two barn doors and a standard window on the opposing side.

[John Thompson]

I have a 2 1/2 HP cyclone with 6" hose that direct hooks to 6" ports on major machines as I enlarged them to avoid any down-size. I have a 1 1/2 HP DC that services the SCMS and router table. A Jet over-head filtration system hangs dead center shop. 2 1/2 and 5 HP Shop vac with HEPA filter for ROS's, etc.

The main shop is a dedicated two car garage. I blow it out every 4 hours with a 140 MPH leaf blower and at closing time in the evening. The Jet is allowed to run 30 minutes once that is done before I run back down and turn it off.

Can I expect to find any fine dust floating in the air or on machine surfaces when I go down in a few minutes?.... You can take it to the bank that it will be there waiting.

You cannot.. cannot get all the dust out of the air and that's a fact....

Sarge..

[Chuck Lenz]

You may not be able to get all the dust, but, with a DC and a air filtration machine you will lesson it or get rid of it faster. I have both and I'm glad I do.

[Craig D Peltier]

I have the 50-760. I have it hooked up to a 8 inch jointer and a jet exacta 3hp cabinet saw. I also just got a jet air filter for the ceiling. It will pick up any dust from sanding and from the TS residual dust and routers etc.
If you hit the bag on the delta you will see a puff of small micron dust come out of it. My air filter will help this dust also. I hit ti every once in a while to knock down dust that clings to the bag and sawdust pile up on the sides.

One thing I noticed is my 1.5 hp 50-760 with 10 13 feet of air dryer vent hose connected to my cabinet saw it doesnt suck out all the sawdust by any means.I mean it piles up in there 5 inches and I either leave it or open the door and push it towards the hose. Is this typical in cabinet saw for the build up?

[Rick Thom]

IOne thing I noticed is my 1.5 hp 50-760 with 10 13 feet of air dryer vent hose connected to my cabinet saw it doesnt suck out all the sawdust by any means.I mean it piles up in there 5 inches and I either leave it or open the door and push it towards the hose. Is this typical in cabinet saw for the build up?
You would be better off with a shorter length of hose, but most dc's don't completely clean out all of the sawdust, in my experience anyway. If you are not connecting to a network of pipes, you would benefit from using a larger size of hose ie. 5 or 6" diameter which is fairly easy to get. At the dc end, if you pull off the 'y' connector, you are left with a single 5" to make a connection. At your saw you likely have a 4" port which you may be able to replace with a 5" or as a distant second choice, just use a reducer 5"-4" at the point the flex hose connects to your ts. The second option isn't as good as the first, but much better than 4" all the way in terms of moving air which is the name of the game.

[John Thompson]

And I possibly (probably) should have added that you will never get all the dust but... the more you have in place the more you will get was my point. And on top of the cyclone.. DC.. over-head and blow-out ever 3-4 hours... I wear a dust mask.

You might mention to your wife that if I had some of these things available 36 years ago when I first began butchering wood, I would have found a way to afford them in lieu of the consequences even before I put all the machines to work. Nobody knew smoking would kill you back in those days either... but we wised up a bit on several things since then.

Sarge..

[Jay Brewer]

Hi Tim, welcome, nice to see another NCer here. No matter how good your collector is, there will always be airborne dust the collector doesent get. I think a dust collector and air clearner go hand in hand. You need good collection at the source and the air cleaner will get most of the finer stuff that lingers in the air. You will also be surprised at how much cleaner your shop stays.

[glenn bradley]

I have a 1HP CD and a shop made 1100 CFM ambient cleaner. I also often work with the large door up and the side door open so my concern is not as great as a basement shop owner's might be. Despite my open-air environment, I run the ambient but I wouldn't pay $300 for one ;-)

[glenn bradley]

One thing I noticed is my 1.5 hp 50-760 with 10 13 feet of air dryer vent hose connected to my cabinet saw it doesnt suck out all the sawdust by any means.I mean it piles up in there 5 inches and I either leave it or open the door and push it towards the hose. Is this typical in cabinet saw for the build up?

My DC pulls hard enough on the TS to draw my safety glasses towards the blade slot and it still leaves little drifts inside the cabinet. I don't see this as an issue as it is self curing. I do occasionally give the old stuff a push towards the duct so new stuff can collect in its place ;-)

[Greg Funk]

The smaller the size of the dust, the worse it is for your health.
Alex,

Do you have any evidence for the above statement? I have looked at a reasonable amount of research on this subject and haven't come across any studies that examine the risk vs particle size for respirable wood dust.

Greg

[Ken Werner]

From an article in the New England Journal of Medicine:

" Particle size is also key: particles larger than 5 µm are effectively filtered out by impaction in the upper airways, unless concentrations are high. Smaller particles penetrate the lungs...."

Here's a link:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/22/2233

The article is in reference to dust from the World Trade Center collapse, but the point is particle size directly correlates with penetration and risk.

If you do a search for " dust particle size and health risk" you'll find more info.

As for the OP, I'd go with a DC good for 1 micron, and an overhead air cleaner.

Ken

[Greg Funk]

From an article in the New England Journal of Medicine:

" Particle size is also key: particles larger than 5 µm are effectively filtered out by impaction in the upper airways, unless concentrations are high. Smaller particles penetrate the lungs...."

Here's a link:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/22/2233

The article is in reference to dust from the World Trade Center collapse, but the point is particle size directly correlates with penetration and risk.

That is consistent with my understanding but below the 5um size that gets into your lungs is .1um worse than .5 or 1um? There are an exponentially larger number of smaller particles but it isn't clear that they are more harmful or even generated in any significant quantities when woodworking than particles in the 1 to 5um range.

Greg

[Randal Stevenson]

From an article in the New England Journal of Medicine:

" Particle size is also key: particles larger than 5 µm are effectively filtered out by impaction in the upper airways, unless concentrations are high. Smaller particles penetrate the lungs...."

Here's a link:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/22/2233

The article is in reference to dust from the World Trade Center collapse, but the point is particle size directly correlates with penetration and risk.

If you do a search for " dust particle size and health risk" you'll find more info.

As for the OP, I'd go with a DC good for 1 micron, and an overhead air cleaner.

Ken

"5 µm are effectively filtered out by impaction in the upper airways" is just a nice way of saying, building up scar tissue. If you build up enough scar tissue in the upper respitory system, then even if their were NO smaller micron size particles, your lungs couldn't reach capacity due to blockage.
So with whatever system you go with for dust collection (myself, due to small shop, I try to use outside more), I would still get a respirator. Cheaper then a cyclone or dust collector, and will help even with those.