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Thread: Venting Dust Collection outside without a cyclone

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Apr 2013
    Location
    Okotoks AB
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    3,495
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    It seems so odd to go to the expense of insulating well & then blowing all that conditioned air outside. Filters work very well at cleaning that air & saving the energy.

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Hayes, Virginia
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    14,760
    This tank was originally an ultrasonic inspection tank at NASA Langley that I purchased as scrap. I sold the aluminum bridge and all of the precision rails and recouped my total cost of the tank plus a few bucks. In the picture you can see that I was in the process of installing vinyl siding so it matches my shop. I was originally going to fabricate a removable top but after putting it in service I decided it wasn't necessary.

    I built the first two chip boxes from plywood, the first one was in the early 1980's. The boxes were 4 by 4 by 8 foot long and they lasted about ten years each. When I got the opportunity to acquire the steel tank I knew it would outlast me so I jumped at the deal...I think I gave 250 bucks for the tank with all of the attachments and it cost me a hundred bucks to get a rollback wrecker to move it to my home.

    When I started the sign shop at CNU we purchased a ShopBot CNC Router and I converted the shipping box to a chip box. I cut rectangular holes in the end of the box and used baby diapers for filters. We only had to empty the ShopBot chip box once each year and I used four 30 gallon plastic trash cans to transfer the chips to one of our dumpsters on campus.

    The first two chip boxes I built from plywood were larger, even so I was filling the chip box about once every couple of months. At that time I lived in a neighborhood and just about a mile away was a horse stable that purchased all of my chips, I made enough to pay the electric bill for the shop. The only down side to this deal was that when i needed to plane walnut I had to empty the chip box because walnut in a horse stall will cause problems with their legs and feet.

    I live in a rural area now. If I live long enough to have to empty the tank I will probably use plastic trash cans again but I now own a front end loader that is able to empty half of the tank. The last option is to wait for a hurricane, it will empty the box in a matter of minutes

    My dust collector a 1.5hp Grizzly that I bought well over twenty years ago. I scrapped the bags and the rolling cart, set the DC on the floor in the corner of my shop and ran the exhaust line directly through the wall into the tank. I estimate that the performance of my DC is much higher than the original specs because there isn't any back pressure or restriction from bags or filters. All of my piping is 4" PVC. In addition to the normal machines I also run a CNC Router and a Laser Engraver so the DC gets plenty of hours on it every month.

    I live on the East Coast of Virginia. The temperature here is pretty mild in the Winter but hot and humid in the Summer. Except for the very few extremely cold periods over the years I have not experienced any serious problems cooling or heating my shop. Most of the heat is stored in the machines and the concrete floor and that provides a pretty stable temperature. I have a small wall mounted heat pump that keeps the temperature very comfortable, I prefer 65 to 70 degrees. Hundreds of people have visited my shop though the years, most were here for the ADA sign training I used to offer. They all experienced the performance of my dust collection and the comfortable temperatures, never had one complaint.
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    Last edited by Keith Outten; 07-06-2020 at 11:57 AM.

  3. #18
    Join Date
    Sep 2016
    Location
    Modesto, CA, USA
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    9,879
    Quote Originally Posted by Frank Pratt View Post
    It seems so odd to go to the expense of insulating well & then blowing all that conditioned air outside. Filters work very well at cleaning that air & saving the energy.
    The OP made no mention of heat or cooling . I assume he lives where they are not needed.
    Bil lD

  4. #19
    Join Date
    Sep 2015
    Location
    San Diego, Ca
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    1,647
    The OP, Eyrich Stauffer, didn't mention what material he would be sucking up. If it is just sawdust, then no separator is needed.

    If Eyrich is sucking up long strings of shavings (e.g., from a jointer/planer) then he needs a separator. Why? because the impeller of the dust collector will get plugged up.

    I have a 2 HP Harbor Fright DC and put a separator in front of it. It captures 100% of the big things. The rest is blown outside. I'm in a semi-rural area so there are not any issues with neighbors.

  5. #20
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Tippecanoe County, IN
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brice Rogers View Post
    If Eyrich is sucking up long strings of shavings (e.g., from a jointer/planer) then he needs a separator. Why? because the impeller of the dust collector will get plugged up.

    I have a 2 HP Harbor Fright DC...
    Interesting. Did you plug up the impeller itself? Or perhaps not remove the intake screen and have a clog there?
    Beranek's Law:

    It has been remarked that if one selects his own components, builds his own enclosure, and is convinced he has made a wise choice of design, then his own loudspeaker sounds better to him than does anyone else's loudspeaker. In this case, the frequency response of the loudspeaker seems to play only a minor part in forming a person's opinion.
    L.L. Beranek, Acoustics (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1954), p.208.

  6. #21
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Toronto Ontario
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    11,247
    Is the blower designed to be in the dirty airstream?

    The blower on my cyclone has a fan that would be damaged by wood scraps...



    Rod.

  7. #22
    Join Date
    Feb 2019
    Location
    Cincinnati, Ohio
    Posts
    968
    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Dufour View Post
    I have a feeling that California, and other states, would have something to say about a commercial shop dumping any visible substance into the air.
    They don't. I contacted the Ohio EPA and did a detailed analysis of our 2 HP Penn Station cyclone for the local maker space. The rep from the EPA was very detailed, but could care less about the vented dust. Might be an issue for a large commercial facility, but at the smaller shop level it wasn't an issue. I specifically asked about exactly this situation since we had a couple of members who were very concerned about this, and opposed venting outdoors for this reason.

    The truth is that the air is already pretty awful in most places, or at least more fouled that any contribution from a dust collector, which would probably produce cleaner air.

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