Originally Posted by
Art Mann
There are those who believe the world behaves according to well understood principles of physics and chemistry. There are others who believe such information is only "book learning" and the "real" world operates in some other unpredictable way. It isn't really possible for a useful conversation to take place between the two groups of individuals.
Bingo.
I've noticed there are two things not brought up in this thread.
The purpose of the separator. This is not a matter of performance. To be clear, it simply reduces the frequency with which you need to clean the DC filter.
How much of that flex hose are you using? The pictures seem to show a lot of it in use. This would be more a concern to me than trying to implement a means of separating dust particles from chips.
I have the HF DC unit, with the Thein baffle and Wynn Environmental cartridge filter. The inlet on the DC is 5". I run an 8' length of 5" flex hose, reduced down to 4" at the machine. I do not attempt to run a DC network with this unit. I think it works fairly well in my shop, one machine at a time.
I often times use supplemental DC via my shop vac. On my TS, I use the shop vac on the blade guard. I also have a cross cut sled that encloses the cutting area and uses the shop vac on the top of this sled to help capture chips and dust from the top side of the cutting action. Between the DC and the shop vac on top, and the shrouds, virtually no dust escapes.
Sled with Guard.jpgIMG_0851.JPG
My Dylos particle counter indicates that despite my best efforts, there remain instances when my best DC practices are inadequate. Having had to fabricate DC solutions for all my power tools (drill press and jointer were the biggest offenders), any short comings in my efforts is due to the lack of capacity of the HF. I think I am getting about as close to the HF maximal capacity as is possible. Even at that, the idea of running a network, while certainly convenient, just seems to be a less than ideal application of this unit.
Last edited by Greg Peterson; 10-28-2013 at 12:34 AM.
Measure twice, cut three times, start over. Repeat as necessary.