I have a 36 x 60 Dynabrade widebelt sander and a 3 HP PSI Tempest cyclone, with a two-cartridge filter stack on the output side. The rest of the shop is connected to the cyclone, too- 18" planer, 12" jointer, RAS, 2 table saws, etc. When the filters are clean everything works fine, but after an extended sanding session, the filters get plugged up with wood flour that gets past the cyclone, and I have to spend 15 or 20 minutes blowing the filters off from the outside with an air gun, and vacuuming the debris out the bottom. After that the D/C usually sucks pretty well again. I just finished a run of 18 alder 3/0 doors, and it got to the point where i had to blow the filters off after every door for the system to work well.
Yesterday I was planing down about 250 L/F of poplar down from 1" to 1/2", prepping it for a run of base molding. I was emptying the chip barrel about every 15 minutes, and during one run I tried to run "just a few more boards", and plugged up the cyclone and the filters. It was a huge mess. After getting the filters down we rolled them out into the driveway and blew them out with a leaf blower and then blew them from the outside inward with the air gun. I got another 2 or 3 gallons of alder wood flour out of the pleats. We put everything back together, finished the planing run, ran the back-out cuts on the stock with the molder and called it an afternoon (my neighbor was helping, having come over at just the right time...). I just finished sweeping the shop out.
I was at the AWFS woodworking show last summer and talked to the American Fabric Filter guy for a while. He said that widebelt sanders and cartridge filters were a bad combination, and a fabric baghouse would be a lot better, easier to clean, and so on.
So, if you're still reading along, my question is do any of you run a fabric filter baghouse with your widebelt/drum sander? Did you convert from a cartridge setup? Can you provide pictures and details?
thanks
Dave