Throw a clamp meter on it and see what you are really drawing for amperage with just one gate open vs 6-8 gates. It may be a bit much, but at least with a DC power consumption is proportional to air flow. I know with the setup I have, with a ton of filter area, I need to throttle it somewhat to avoid blowing the overload protection.
JR
I've been at drill all weekend and just had a chance to watch and peruse the whole thread. Though you have far more space and equipment than me, I see one area to shave some time, even if your running a batch of doors:
You run the stick, then adjust the same machine to S4S the other side to size. Utilizing your shop and the equipment in the video (and this is for batches of doors, not just one door):
SLR to +5/32
Plane 1 edge -1/16" (up to 10-15 boards at a time, not one board as done on the shaper). I have a spiral head and the finish is ready for sanding.
Stick boards -1/16.
Cut to length.
Cope needed pieces.
Cut panels.
Build doors.
Edge sand remaining 1/32.
Drill hinges.
Widebelt.
ROS.
IMO, you're wasting your time sanding to 220 with a ROS. I finish my own cabinets in paint or stain and I promise, 220 is a waste of time. If you're seeing a scratch pattern after 180, you're pressing too hard.
Here's my sanding (I don't have a widebelt)
Poplar paint grade: 120, 180 done. After a widebelt, you should be able to hit it with just 150. Properly primed and painted, you can get it so slick a fly will land on it, slip and break a wing.
Stain Grade: Alder, Pine, Cedar woods - 120, 180. Again, if your widebelt is tuned in - straight to 180.
Stain grade: Maple, oak, hickory, or any ol' hard wood - 100, 120, 180.
I don't buy 150 grit. I can go 120 to 180 with spectacular results. If you can't, then you're pressing too hard with 120.
Every piece of plywood gets sanded with 180 before assembly. The plywood is presanded but just isn't smooth. The weight of the ROS with 180 grit is enough pressure to denib all the plys I work with. Some may think this is over kill, but if you feel one of my doors or cabinets compared to a box store piece or even one done by local painters and you can easily tell the difference (and I'm talking the local-lacquer-huffin-painters I had to deal with). We'll sand the 5x5 drawer material in whole sheets before breaking them down. I had one lady complain the drawer bottoms were too slick. Whatever lady, you were gonna put contact paper in it anyway.
My post may or may not help you. But I THINK that's how I'd do it (in regards to your process). Theory and application don't always mesh.
-Lud
Its harder on the motor also. Most motors last longer if you just let them run all day rather than starting and stopping them all day. Read the owner's manual though, some smaller motors have a duty cycle and will overheat if left running too long, even if they aren't under load.
An issue with a large system, say a 12" main, is that you can't just run with one or two gates open and maintain the minimum velocity needed to clear the line and to separate efficiently. Every cyclone is designed with a minimum and maximum inlet velocity to separate. That means a large system must keep the cfm up to work correctly. A one size fits all will mean high energy bills even if partially used. Dave
I think I would get a Nederman or Bellfab to run the shop and use the 20HP for widebelt/sanders and maybe the moulder if I could not find a cyclone for it. You are paying for the new dust collector in your heat bill.
My 8400’ building cost me about $210 to heat this last month ending on Feb 7th. I understand natural gas is less—but not that much! I keep the whole building at 60-degrees. I opened the garage doors many, many times. My building is wrapped in large 9’x9’ and 9’ x6’ windows too!
Greg
Last edited by Gregory Stahl; 02-12-2018 at 12:57 PM. Reason: Spelling
I'm cycling the air back into the building. It comes back cooler, but not by a heck of a lot.
That's probably about right. Similar square footage, higher wall height (though you did scissor trusses if I remember corectly), I've got 68' of 14' tall overhead doors and too many windows, I'm a bit warmer at thermostat set at 63 and I'm 60(ish) miles north of madtown so the delta T is a bit greater. As an example, it's currently 8 degrees here, and 16 in Madison. I'm about even with Stevens Point for reference, just a twinge south of there
I'm kicking myself at the moment for doing the electric heat, I looked at a calculator somewhere online, and with current LP prices my cost per btu was 2.6 times that of LP. NG is a nit more than half the cost of LP per btu. I should be around $450 per month on LP right now.
A propane boiler is only $9k installed, and then I'll have a secondary heat source as well. Redundancy at -40 is peace of mind and it'll pay for itself quickly enough.
Last edited by Martin Wasner; 02-12-2018 at 7:44 PM.
Trying to get them to look at Biomass heating at the shop. Burn wood scraps
There's a local commercial shop that burns all of it's scrap for heat. I don't know if they are using sawdust as well.
There is a lot of variation in how utilities bill across the country. Our utility put us on a demand meter for a few years. That is a killer with the bigger motors. I had always heard start up is what gets you with a demand meter but that was not the case with ours. Long running of motors past 15 0r 20 minutes is what kicked this type meter up. The utility put a computer device on ours for a month so we could see where the cost was going. It helped and we never ran the 3 head sander or the moulder at the same time and shut the DC off when we did not need it. Closing blast gates does help and have never noticed dust buildup in the ducts with our system. that shaved 2 to 3 hundred off the bill each month and did not affect production much. One thing that surprised me was the cost of running lights. After much negotiating I talked the utility into taking us off the meter and paying more per kw. That way we only pay for what we use.
Running the DC all day would be annoying to me. That is the norm in large shops with a lot of employees but in a 3 to 5 or so custom shop I see no need. We now have a twin 10HP Belfab unit that feeds one baghouse with dust transfer to a trailer or briquitter. One side collects the 3 head sander, shapers and tenoner. the other side does the 4 head moulder, jointer, planer and various saws and other tools. We pack remote starters that control the 2 fans and dust transfer. It works good, saves a lot of steps and only run the DC when needed.
There are more complex systems that use auto blast gates, DC starting when a machine comes on and computerized VFDs to control the fans. I am happy with the way my system works now and simple to maintain.