I have heard of woodworkers who use their dust collector to pull air through a ceiling mounted box with a set of filters mounted to the sides. I don't personally know anyone who does this, and I haven't heard any reports of success or failure doing so. While searching this forum for results in doing this, I came across this thread from 2005.
https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....-Bad&highlight
I had thought of buying or making a whole shop air filter, but this post makes sense and has me thinking again. I am mostly a turner, and I am only using the lathe, BS,TS, and sanders part of the time when I am in the shop. The dust collection port behind the lathe appears to work well for chips and fine dust, but I have no way to test. So my question is:
If I use a 4" hose on my DC attached to filters that catch 5 to 20 micron dust particles, such as a shop vac filter, and the post filtration air is going through my dust collector with a 1 micron filter, would this not efficiently filter the airborne particles? If so, where in the shop (high, low, center, corner, near the DC, etc) would you place the filter? What else would you use as a filter material? I would close all other blast gates while I am not using tools that generate dust, allowing the full power of the DC to flow through the air filters. I hope this makes sense. Is this an Idea worth pursuing, or is it a waste of time and money? If it matters, my DC is a Delta 1HP. Thanks in advance, I am working on plans to get the new shop up and running.