Dust Collection/Cyclone advice

[Ash Baulackey]

Nice setup Chris thanks!

[Frank Pratt]

I have a 900 sq/ft garage. I run 5" metal ducting with three 5" drops. At the end of each drop is a wye with a 4" and 2.5" blast gate.

I use 4" flexible hose to most machines and primarily use the 2.5" for vacuuming.

All this connects to a Jet 1.5HP, converted into a 2 stage, using an Oneida Super Duty XL cyclone and a plastic 55 gallon drum.

I put 39 gallon home depot heavy duty bags in the drum and collect all the saw dust and shavings in that.

I've yet to empty the Jet bag since I converted it to 2 stage.

I use this with a 12" J/P, Sawstop TS, router table and others. I generated 12 bags of shavings when I made louvers for plantation shutters using a Shopfox W1812 moulder.

My Jet DC keeps up fine.

Chris, You'd get quite a performance boost just by raising the filter unit & lowering the blower so there would just be a straight piece of duct between the two. It looks like there is space to do that. 90's add a lot of resistance & sharp 90's even more so, at least 2X the loss coefficient.

[Allan Speers]

Chris, You'd get quite a performance boost just by raising the filter unit & lowering the blower so there would just be a straight piece of duct between the two. It looks like there is space to do that. 90's add a lot of resistance & sharp 90's even more so, at least 2X the loss coefficient.

Good point.

- And the same for his inlet, which will automatically also get better if he raises the filter.

Also, as I recently learned, you should have a length of STRAIGHT pipe just before it enters the cyclone body, so as to minimize turbulance & increase separation. Probably 2-3 feet, for a 4" duct, IIRC.

[ChrisA Edwards]

Chris, You'd get quite a performance boost just by raising the filter unit & lowering the blower so there would just be a straight piece of duct between the two. It looks like there is space to do that. 90's add a lot of resistance & sharp 90's even more so, at least 2X the loss coefficient.

Totally agree, but I really haven't had an issue either with collecting at the tool source or blocking any of the ducting.

The only area that gives me a bit of grief is the short flexible piece between the cyclone and the blue drum and I recently re-worked that making it a little shorter and taking that slight kink out of it. If I'm, planing a long wide board on my Hammer A3-31 J/P, sometimes the clippings can clog in that area, and it's more when I've done a few boards an the clippings pile up like a cone in the blue drum, so I go over to the blue drum and give it a shake to level it out.

Maybe a bit better air flow, through my ducts, re-working some of the 90's, would blow that down a bit better.

I'm going to add an overhead drop, above my table saw, so that will be a good time to re-plumb a little.