Booster fan for dust collection

[Ron Selzer]

Is anyone running booster fan(s) for dust collection?
Would like to add a booster fan to the 5" duct to Radial Arm saw
don't know how will an inline fan would work in this application
Thanks
Ron

[Jim Becker]

Honestly, I don't recall anyone every trying this and I'd be concerned that whatever inline fan you can find wouldn't be rated for/appropriate for material handling.

[Paul F Franklin]

I've thought about doing this to add some oomph to the table saw blade guard dust collection. A lot of folks just use a shop vac, but that seems like too much hassle for me. If I do it, I'll likely use a central vacuum blower. They have good "suck" and are designed to handle light debris.

[glenn bradley]

I would not expect long term success. Those fans are not rated to move the heavy and abrasive material that would pass through them. If you look at the insides of your ducting or fittings you will see that they look scoured. The inline fans are meant to move air only.

[David L Morse]

Yes, this is an issue with any tool that has both high pressure and low pressure ports. Table saw, RAS, MS/CMS, and router table are all good examples (assuming some sort of shroud around the RAS or MS).

I've used a shop vac before and it works well, kind of a pain to have two collection bins, especially when the smaller one gets most of the swarf.

I've spent a little bit of time thinking about this but haven't really done anything yet. A booster fan with high pressure and material handling capability would be nice. That way it could be fed into a port on the DC so all of the dust goes to one bin.

Shop vacs and rugsuckers have plenty of pressure but will choke on the amount of dust that has to be handled. I've thought a bit about using an electric leaf blower that has a vac port.

Here's a chart I made comparing the fan curves of a typical shop vac to my guess at a leaf blower. You might find it interesting, but I did that a couple of years ago so don't ask too many hard questions

[Ron Selzer]

Was kinda hoping someone had used a fan with the motor outside of the airflow stream as is commonly used in larger exhaust fans.
Don't want to deal with all the dust/chips getting into the motor
Ron

[Michael W. Clark]

If doing this, you would use a radial blade fan like is used in single stage DC. The radial blade is best at material handling.

The in-line type are axial or vaneaxial and are meant for fumes like in a spray booth application. They also have relatively low SP ratings.

[Jack Frederick]

This one would be touchy. You will need a material handling fan blade set-up. I would suggest you give Tjernlund ( pron, CHernlund) Products a call and ask what if anything they have for this. Excellent outfit. 800 255-4208

[Bill Dufour]

I have read of adding an intake booster fan to an air compressor inlet. Supercharging the intake. If you can get 1.47 PSI you should boost output by 10% since 1.47 is 10% of 14.7. Of course it will not be totally efficient and air flow is hard to calculate.
Bill D