Design phase, DC on 110vac, 20 amps, portable

[Scott Winners]

Help me get this right please.

Like many, my shop is in a 2 car garage shared with my wife's automobile. I have access to 2 breakers, 110vac, 20 amps each. I have a 48" lathe, a lunchbox planer, a 6" jointer, a monster radial arm saw, and a 2 bag / 4" DC from craigslist.

I am convinced exhausting the DC outdoors is a bad idea for most including me.

I am going to have to have a portable (on casters) solution and I am going to have to move the suction hose around between tools, or I can get a divorce.

My vague plan is to build a platform nominal 26 inches by up to 96 inches long, on casters, and pile all my air quality gear on it.

My thinking is I can mount a 55 gallon barrel at one end with a 4" cyclone mounted to the lid. On the suction side of the cyclone, a 4" hose to move around between tools. On the vacuum side of the cyclone, DC impeller. Moving on down the platform from the impeller, I think I want to keep both bags. Build a box around the exhaust bag, and then port that air to a HEPA filter at the far end of the rolling platform.

What I need to do is minimize wear and tear on the cannister filter. I get that a reasonable sized one is about $300. I could order that tomorrow, and the nice lady would quote me shipping to Alaska based on the weight. Then she would call me back same day and quote me elevated shipping based on air freight. About a week later she would call me again, sheepishly, with a third (even higher) shipping quote based on the volume the box takes up in the aeroplane rather than the weight. Realistically, a $300 cannister filter is going to cost me 500-600 dollars delivered. So I need to minimize the fines that get to the filter.

My main question is, if a HEPA filter cost you double, say $600 instead of $300, how interested would you be in keeping both bags on a cyclone equipped 2 bag dust collector, to prolong filter life, for the price of boxing in the exhaust bag and ducting that to the HEPA filter? In summer months I could roll the DC and whatever tool out to the driveway, open a door in the exhaust bag cabinet, and put zero wear on the filter.

I am pretty convinced to build a separate filter unit to process shop air when the DC isn't running, plan to DIY that with off the shelf parts. A few furnace filters, a fan, mount it in the DC cart somewhere, done. And have more breaker space in my next shop.

Thanks for your input. I used to buy non filtered Camels by the carton, now, too soon old and too late wise, I am concerned about air quality.

[Jim Becker]

I mounted the 120v Delta blower and Wynn filter on the wall of the gara...err...temporary shop...and did the same for the SDD. A word to the wise...check the bolts and seals on the actual blower from time to time if you are moving it around. I found that there was some leakage at that point of fine dust, meaning it never even got to the filter.

I honestly do not think you are going to need to be concerned about the life of any quality canister filter you choose to use. With occasional maintenance, it should last you decades with no issue if you continue to use that solution. And if not, the next person who owns it will not need to worry about it, either.

There are a number of threads here where folks have built a portable, self-contained unit that included the blower, canister filter and a small cyclone. It may take some creative searching to find them...hopefully, one or more of those who have done this will respond.

[Frank Pratt]

I would advise thinking good & hard about the portable solution. I did that for a few years & it's just horrible, especially in a tight shop, to have to be dragging around cords & flex hose from machine to machine. And you still have to have a place to park the thing. More often than not, DC just didn't get used.

If you mount the DC in a corner & run a some overhead duct, you can have drops where you need them & have nothing in the way when it's time to park the cars. My situation is similar, in that my shop is also a 2 car garage that gets both cars parked in it most every night.

A good cyclone will catch all but a tiny fraction of the dust, fines included. My Oneida has a HEPA filter that only needs cleaning a couple of times a year, unless I forget to empty the drum, but that's a whole other story I've had it 5 years or so & according to my air quality meter still works as well as new. Just don't get aggressive with any kind of mechanical cleaning. I wouldn't get anything that uses internal flappers to clean the filter.

To clean, I stick the shop vac hose down the center of the filter & use compressed air, directed at a shallow angle, down the pleats inside the filter. Without the shop vac that would create a huge mess, but the vac catches most of it. Oneida recommends blowing compressed air from the outside, but I've never been able to the filter even remotely clean that way. It can also be wet cleaned, but I haven't tried that yet.

My shop has a forced air furnace that I built a filter box for. It holds 2, 2 stage filters arranged in a V that sits under the furnace. I keep the fan running continuously when in the shop & it works well.

[Jim Becker]

Long the lines of Frank's comments, overhead drops with some form of quick disconnect for a 10' hose can easily support multiple machines out in the middle during "woodworking sessions" and be hung out of the way while the space is in "garage" mode. Although there's no parking situation in my temporary shop, I took this general approach for sharing drops for multiple tools. In fact, the only drop/gate that doesn't move around is the one connected to my CNC machine because of how it's suspended. For everything else, I have two hoses that I can move around at will. Moving a hose is a lot easier than moving the machine. (And yea, I did consider doing my setup on wheels and I'm glad I didn't)