DC through wall into dumpster..

[Jim Andrew]

Occasionally you see a commercial dc unit selling at auction, think you should keep your eyes open for such a system, meanwhile get by with what you can afford. Clearvue does sell motors, impellers, and blower housings.

[Julie Moriarty]

20 yard right now but it's looking like we'll need to upgrade to at least a 30 next month. I don't know that I'm understanding your idea, but it sounds promising. Can you explain your idea differently or sketch it out for me? It sounds like you're suggesting to partition off the container, but I don't understand the benefits of that, but I'd love to know them!

I'm only talking about covers for the dumpster, no partitions. Imagining the exhaust side of a DC blowing chips and dust into a dumpster, I could see billows of dust, as well as chips, being forced into the dumpster and some of it being blown into the air. Covering the dumpster would reduce that or eliminate it. You mentioned possibly having to access the inside of the dumpster to even out the debris. Three or four cover sections would make access easier.

As for sealing the top, it it's sealed too tightly, it would choke the DC. Enter the screen mesh. One of the top sections would be screen mesh. In designing the dumpster top sections, one would need to accept the exhaust of the DC and one would need to be something like screen mesh. If you locate those two covers at opposite ends of the dumpster, it would give some of the dust more time to settle while blowing the debris across the length of dumpster and reducing the number of times you have to even it out.

I'll try to put together a drawing...

[Julie Moriarty]

This is a 30 yard dumpster I found on SketchUp. I added 2x4s for supports at each end. Imagine them to be a frame. 2x4s should work to support whatever material you use to wrap the frame to make covers for the top (plastic, canvas, etc). At one end is the DC exhaust secured to a plywood frame. Debris can be blown straight down or you could add a fitting to direct it. That little ramp at the bottom of the dumpster would work until the dumpster started to fill over it.

At the other end is screen mesh on a 2x4 frame. Imagine covers filling in the void between the two. The covers can be removed and replaced as needed. Maybe add something to hold the covers down in wind.

30YdDcDumpster.jpg

[Jim Becker]

Depending on where you are and local jurisdictional preferences, you may need to cover the dumpster for this kind of debris, anyway...at least with a tarp or a mesh screen...so that the material doesn't escape into the air, given this is a commercial business and there's more scrutiny with that quite often.

[Kevin Cackler]

Ah, thank you Julie. That helps! We were thinking of buying a heavy duty industrial tarp to cover it (Mostly to keep out rain and as you said, to eliminate dust clouds) but I do like where you're going with this.

I called Clearvue but they did not recommend their blowers for this type of application, because their blowers aren't intended to be used in a 'material handling' fashion. Does anyone have any experience using a regular dust blower motor in this fashion, with the material going through the blower instead of into a cyclone? The sales rep at Clearvue did not want to sell it to me at all, and recommended that I research and purchase a material handling blower.

[Peter Christensen]

You could take another approach by getting a suitable cyclone with a valve at the bottom to drop the dust onto a grain auger or a conveyer out to a big bin. Or into a pellet maker/puck maker to compress the dust. Might find someone to buy the pellets for heat or use them yourself. Pellet makers are available here or if you want to take a chance and save money order one direct from China. Poke around Alibaba for those.
https://www.donaldson.com/en-us/indu...rotary-valves/
https://www.dustcollectorhq.com/dust...or-valves.html

I've seen a shipping container locally somewhere that has the dust blown into the container with a couple plastic barrels that have holes in them as the exhaust (maybe some filter screen inside). I think they dig out the container when it is full and there is tones of dust all over the area.

The reluctance of Clear-Vue not to sell is understandable because their impeller housing uses plastic around the perimeter. Great for fine dust but not heavy sawdust and bits of wood offcuts.

Cincinnati Fan was suggested earlier.

https://www.cincinnatifan.com/index.htm

[Kevin Cackler]

Peter, the conveyer to a briquette machine is on our list for the future, but right now we need fast and cheap. But that is definitely something we're interested in pursuing in the coming years.

[Jim Becker]

The blowers that are used with a "traditional bag DC" typically are setup to handle material passing through them since they are put in front of the filtration/collection bags in those systems. That said, do NOT use a floor sweep with that kind of arrangement as picking up a piece of metal can result in sparking and a potential fire situation beyond the blower.

One of the things you need to check on carefully is what the dust handling requirements are for your business because it's a business, and especially if you have employees. It can have implications on both code compliance, OSHA and insurance.

[Keith Outten]

Kevin, my tank is horizontal. The chips somehow distribute pretty evenly over the entire tank. I'm not sure why this happens.

[Martin Wasner]

Cyclone with an airlock. You can then either drop it into a dumpster, or blow it from there into a roll off or trailer.

How many yards a week are you producing?

[Kevin Cackler]

@Keith, good info, thank you.

@Martin - The problem with the cyclone and airlock is that we need the DC to be inside the shop, but the roll off is outside. How do we rig up an auxillary blower to blow what has come out of the airlock outside?

We are looking at probably 30 yards/month between chips and dust and scrap material, so not a ton, but enough that it's becoming a problem to try to manage with portable collectors.

[Brice Rogers]

I use my dust collector for collecting sawdust, woodturning shavings and jointer shavings. I use a separator first. If the separator get full, it dumps the shavings into the dust collector. If I'm pulling in long stringy shavings, t takes about 10 seconds for the inlet to the dust collector to jamb up. Sawdust? no problem. Stringly shavings? 10 seconds until it plugs. So, when I read other posters mention that it won't be a problem to eliminate the collector it makes me wonder. If you are running sawdust and fine stuff through the dust collector, then you won't have a problem. But if you are running longer stringy ribbons of wood through it, it'll plug up. I bought a DC for $10 because the original owner let the inlet totally plug and it wouldn't suck at all. He sold it because it appeared to no longer work. I cleared about 8 inches of "plug" and it worked fine. Maybe that explains the $10 asking price.

My separator is a Thien baffle. It is about as simple as you can imagine. An average 7th grader can probably handle the task. It totally eliminates the chance of plugging the DC (unless I let it get too full). But as Jim Becker mentioned, the separator needs to be sealed. Otherwise it doesn't work well.

So I guess the OP's idea of skipping the separator and blowing stuff directly into the trash contain may or may not work depending on the size and shape of the wood chips. If they are small -- like sawdust or wood particles the size of peanuts or popcorn then they are likely to go through the DC. If you have shavings that are long enough that they can wrap around fins of the impeller, then you'll have a problem. So it depends on what you are trying to collect.

[Kevin Cackler]

Here is where I'm currently at...

Cyclone system which exhausts outside attached to an airlock. Airlock dumps into a trash can which is hand dumped a few times per day. Eventually add a tee under the air lock with a blower behind. The purpose of this blower will be to transport the dumped material into the dumpster outside.

1. Will my tee idea work or will it create some sort of back pressure situation? It should be fine because of the airlock, right?

2. I'd really prefer to not have the cyclone if at all possible because I don't see a need for it. But I cannot think of another way to transport the material without having it go through the blower. Any ideas on eliminating it from the plan? I know I need some sort of container to accept the material but I feel like a plywood box would work just as well since I don't really care about separation here.

3. Or I could just put one big blower directly in line with my 8 inch main and hope for the best with material passing through it.

As usual, your thoughts are very much appreciated.

[Martin Wasner]

@Martin - The problem with the cyclone and airlock is that we need the DC to be inside the shop, but the roll off is outside. How do we rig up an auxillary blower to blow what has come out of the airlock outside?

We are looking at probably 30 yards/month between chips and dust and scrap material, so not a ton, but enough that it's becoming a problem to try to manage with portable collectors.

If it needs to be inside, then you can airlock it from a cyclone and use a transfer fan to blow it into a dumpster. It's just a closed loop with a fan.

Is there a reason it needs to be inside?

[Bradley Gray]

Or I could just put one big blower directly in line with my 8 inch main and hope for the best with material passing through it.

I have a setup like this on my 24" planer/16" jointer - a cast iron sawmill blower (8" pipe) inline on the outflow side blows shavings into a pile outside.

Never had a clog. I have seen sawmills running these blowers with 50 feet of discharge pipe.