Shop Dust Collection Setup and Selection

[Robert McNaull]

Hello all,

New to the boards and have been lurking for quite a while around here and have a few questions for the dust collection guru's and those with their own .

Setup details - my wood shop is my basement which has positive and negatives. I have about 1600 square feet of work space which is great, but this is also inside the house itself. I currently have a home made dust collector made from an old impeller blower I pulled out of a scrap heap that draws through a 55 gallon drum with a Thein baffle and then draws through a furnace filter before dumping back into the room. This is currently on a mobile platform and gets pulled around my basement to where I need it. This works well for the planer and jointer, however at times the planer (Dewalt 735) will push chips clear into the furnace filter leaving me to believe my Thein baffle needs some adjustment in regards to the gap sizing and possibly the air exhaust.

My plan is to get the system stationary and install 6" duct pipe for the dust system and will still exhaust inside the basement (in a subdivision, don't think my neighbors would appreciate exhausting outside). The pre-separator will stay in the loop as well. I have been through multiple past threads and everyone's situation is a little different so I would like some additional advice.

I have been looking at and pricing dust collectors for some time and have not found a reasonable used deal in my area here in Iowa and am looking at new.

What is the difference/advantages to a cannister filter over a bag filter? I would opt for 1 micron filtering most likely.

What minimum cfm rating is recommended? My duct runs would be about 30-40ft max with a piece of flex hose at the end to the machine, higher chip volume such as the planer will be closer to the collector.

Like everybody wants, cheaper cost wise without compromising quality is always better, what machines do you suggest? I have been pricing grizzly's, 2 hp model with cannister filter but am open to better suggestions.

I'm sure I will have more questions later as well.

Thanks for the Advice,

Bob

[Joe Jensen]

Bob, lots to learn and lots of different opinions on dust collection. First, what is your budget? Sounds like you want a mobile solution. In general bag and drum systems move less air than cyclones but they are cheaper. Thing to look for in a bag system are how fine does the bag filter. I personally strongly prefer a cyclone system. I own an Oneida and they make nice mobile cyclones but they are more pricey than Grizzly

[Robert McNaull]

Joe, I would like to keep the dust collector itself under $400 to leave myself some room to spend on duct work. The unit will end up fairly stationary in the corner of the basement. I would like a cyclone too but the price is a little tough to swallow, I have looked at the oneida's and they are nice units. I am the weekend warrior type wood worker and can't quite justify the cost of an expensive unit currently. I have looked at the Super dust deputy but don't know if the $175 is a $175 improvement over the barrel and baffle?

[David Kumm]

400 is a tough budget but putting a 2 hp bagger on a 30-40 run is asking a lot. a small 3 hp cyclone with a good canister is the ideal but given the budget I'd buy a bagger, put a good bag on it- most don't come with one- and wheel it around. I don't think spending for pipe before you can get the right unit will do anything but cause your wife to complain about dust on everything. You will be changing furnace filters because without adequate flow too much dust will spill from the machine and not be captured. Dave

[Ronald Blue]

I just pulled the trigger on the 3 hp Grizzly double bagger. It was $365 plus freight. Look for it to arrive the end of the week. What part of Iowa Robert?

[Jim Andrew]

I put my cyclone and piping in in '05, and the pipe and fittings cost more than the cyclone. Think the 2 hp cyclone was 995 at that time. Of course, I could not find the S &D in 6" so used spiral pipe and steel fittings. Of course, now I have it, have changed things around a couple times, and only had to buy a few fittings, as the metal ones can be taken down and reinstalled just fine. If you use plastic, don't glue it. Dust systems are temporary, always subject to improvement.

[Tom Taylor123]

Ebay is a place to search "cyclone separator". A guy with Youtube channel "eastcaroga" makes them. With a Harbor freight blower on top of the separator and a trash can for the wood waste. It is something I thought about until I was offered a different solution. On a budget like yours you can't overlook this.
I am also new here and I am liking what I see.
Tom

[Robert McNaull]

I just pulled the trigger on the 3 hp Grizzly double bagger. It was $365 plus freight. Look for it to arrive the end of the week. What part of Iowa Robert?

Located in the Ames area.

[Robert McNaull]

Thanks for the responses, been a little slow on my end as we are getting ready for the arrival of our first anytime now. Now that the dresser is done I have time to focus for a little while on shop improvement.

I am rethinking the fixed piping and just sticking with a bagger with a pre-separator to help with the planer. I like the layout of the delta units with the layout of the blower parallel to Is there any major benefit to the cannister filter over a bag filter other than some additional surface area from the pleats?

If I get the chance I will check around my dad's next time I'm there, we had a cyclone around that was for our grain setup, never installed the cylcone as we just ran pipe out and blew the dust into the field and thinks it's still in the barn.

[Jim Andrew]

Hard to tell if that old cyclone will work or not, guess you could try, just out your time and effort if it doesn't. I skipped the bagger dust collectors, when I set up my shop just went for a cyclone, mounted it outside the shop on the wall in a storage area of the shed, and put the piping in. Takes time to work it out but has been working pretty well for a number of years. Found a shop vac works well for sanding with hand held ROS and Belt sander, you need a belt sander with a bag so you have a place to hook the hose, and my SCMS also has a vac hooked where the bag went. Not perfect, but seems nothing else works great on those either. Huge improvement over the bag though.

[Greg Peterson]

Here's my setup - Harbor Freight DC unit, Thien baffle mod and a Wynn Environmental cartridge filter. The inlet on this DC unit is 5" and Wynn Environmental offers a 5" hose (and nice hose clamps too). I run about an 8' section of this hose with a reducer at the end to bring it down to 4".

Because my work space is relatively small (1.5 car garage), the DC unit more or less pivots around. It's rare that I have to move it more than a couple of feet.

But getting a DC unit up and running is only half the battle, and the easier half at that. Capturing the fines at their point of creation is critical. The process by which the fines are created is brutally violent and as a result these particles tend to explode into many directions. Your saw dust just innocently collects in a pile or scatters around the tool. The fines are ejected and float off into the air space, tumbling along indefinitely but ultimately settling on a stationary object. Simply walking by stirs them up and up and away all over.

I use an ambient air filter system to capture the fines that escape my DC. Occasionally, I will turn on the ambient air filter and use a box fan to kick up dust that may have settled outside the jet stream or areas I do not/can not disturb. I have enven gone through my shop using the exhaust on my shop vac to 'blow' it out, after which I close it up, turn on the box fan and ambient filter and let it scrub for several hours.

[David Kumm]

Greg, what filters do you use for the ambient? Dave

[Greg Peterson]

Greg, what filters do you use for the ambient? Dave

I just ordered the Wynn Environmental filters for my Jet cleaner. Running the stock filters now, but am expecting better performance with the Wynn Environmental upgrade.

Those fines are nasty little buggers and quite challenging to capture.

[David Kumm]

I just ordered the Wynn Environmental filters for my Jet cleaner. Running the stock filters now, but am expecting better performance with the Wynn Environmental upgrade.

Those fines are nasty little buggers and quite challenging to capture.

I did the same thing. Stock filters don't do much in comparison. You will see a diference on the dylos. Dave

[Greg Peterson]

A fellow Dylos user. Excellent. My Wynn filters were waiting for me tonight when I got home. Have them loaded up in the Jet unit and running at this moment. Dylos is on.