Dust collector confusion

[Alan Lightstone]

Lots and lots of good information above. Personally, I have a 5HP Oneida hooked up to my table saw, bandsaw, router table, jointer, planer, and wide-belt sander.

Handheld tools I all use Festool vacs for all (they are Festool tools, so easy hookup, plus the Kapex miter saw (which I actually wanted to hook up to the DC, but long story short, mismeasured the cabinet, so now its got to be the Festool vac. Doesn't work great. Jim's point about miter saws being difficult for dust collection is very, very true.

My drill press, of all things, I have hooked up to the whole house vacuum, which sits next to it. Actually works very well.

I have an router fence dust collection fitting that I connect to the Festool vac also, so both the DC and Festool vac work at the same time on that.

Equally as important, I have two Jet air cleaners (and actually a home made one made from a portable fan), so serious air cleaners. Being a cardiothoraci anesthesiologist, also with an engineering background, I'm very in tune with air quality. Because, outside of decreasing the mess you have to clean up every day, the real purpose of all these dust collectors is to remove the harmful small particles that do real damage to your lungs. If it's not in the air, you won't breathe it. Also, get yourself a good P100 respirator (I use the 3M, but there are a number of good ones) and wear it when generating dust, and for a while afterwards. I only take mine off when my Dylos particle counter returns to ambient levels, so I take this very seriously.

Again, my $0.02 and these are certainly not cheap, but...

[Michael Rutman]

Thank you everyone, I think I finally understand. I’m seeing different information each time I look because people do things that work “well enough”. As in, I could hook up a festool sander to a DC, sure, it will collect some of the dust. But if I use a Festool DE it’s going to collect a heck of a lot more dust and overall work better.

My workshop is shut down for a few months as I expand from 300 to 900 sq feet. After this thread my plan is a Harvey G800 and at least one Festool DE to go with my existing Makita DE. The Harvey is overkill but has some features I really like over the G700. Everything with a 4” goes to the DC, everything else will have either the Festool or Makita plugged in.

I’ll have to come back to respirators. Right now I find them difficult to wear but I am looking at the PAPR.

Again, thank you, very informative and helpful again.