"Home-made" Dust Collectors

[gerald_d]

We are about to improve our dust collection. On searching around the web, I discovered these sites that intrigue me:
Bill Pentz's Cyclone & Dust Collection Research (http://cnets.net/~eclectic/woodworking/cyclone/Index.html)
Terry Hatfield's Dust Eliminator (http://cnets.net/~eclectic/woodworking/cyclone/Index.html)
Todd Crow's Dust Collection (http://www.ecenet.com/~kcrow/dust_collection.htm)
Art Silva's talk on dust collection (http://www.lvwwg.com/mar00/LVWG0300.HTM)
And quite a few more "amateur experts" who mostly talk the same language.

Are there any Shopbotters who have successfully built their own fans/cyclones/filter systems?

[sheldon@dingwallguitars.com]

Gerald,

I have been working on a design for a 3000 cfm filter wall. I see it as being most used next to sanding areas and picking up fine dust from the Shopbot. I also hope to be able to blow off the entire shop on a regular basis and have to collector scrub out the dust. We'll see if it lives up to it's promise.

More to the point. I own an Onieda cyclone system with a canister filter. It's OK, but the canister loads up at least once a week and requires disassembly to clean. If I was to do it over, I'd go with shaker bags instead. I think cyclones make a lot of sense on big, high volume collectors, I'm not so sure anymore on small ones.

I also own a couple of Taiwanese double bag units with 1 micron bags. The improvements in these machines over the last couple of years is impressive. A lot of bang for your buck.

[gerald_d]

Sheldon, thanks for all that input!

The "dust" from our SB is more coarse than fine - probably because we use those razor sharp single flute cutters that give a nice clean shaving or chip. It is the sanding afterwards that causes the fine dust mess.

I have seen spraypainters use those filter walls. Body repair shops, etc.

[pappy]

Gerald,
I built a cyclone using the plans from Wood
Magazine (probably eight years ago). I put a
put a 50 gal fiber drum under it and made my own
exhaust filter. I used a 20x20 furnace filter for
the large stuff followed by a 2x20x20 hepa filter
for the fine dust. It is mainly used for my table
saw. About the same time I built one of those dust collectors that take the dust out of the air
and I built it with three of the squirrel cage blowers in it. My shop is about 1200 sq feet and
it did quite a good job until I got my bot.
I have been using a Ryobi dust collect/vac on the
bot and it has the cloth bag over the filter which is plugged after the first cut with the bot.
Guess I should run a pipe from my cyclone.

[donframbach]

Sheldon, could I ask a couple of questions?

1) do you have a 1.5 or 2 hp Oneida dust collector?

2) what size ducting do (or did) you run from the collector to the ShopBot?

3) are you using the ShopBot supplied dust skirt? If so are you using the 2.5" rigid tubing the connects to the dust skirt?

TIA Don Frambach

[eric@rainbowboats.com]

Just another idea. I had to replace my mother's furnace a few years ago (hot air furnace) so I kept the blower unit which was a seperate cabinet from the burner unit.

I put a plywood front on it and I buy the pleated furnace filters when they are on sale, usually 2 for 5 bucks. I lay 2 of those on the open top and it gives me about 1500 cfm.

This in addition to my dust collector and a smaller air unit keeps the dust way down.

I build boats from red cedar and the dust can be real annoying. The whole system only cost a few bucks and is simple.

I'm sure it's not getting down to the .2 micron range but it takes a huge amount of dust out of the air.

That part of my shop is about1,400 square feet.

[kevin]

I also have an oneida cyclone 3hp for my business . I bought 2 cartriges instead of 1 and I never have had them plug up. I have been thinking of attaching a old randim orbit sander on a bathroom fan timer to the bottom of the two cartriges to shake out any fine dust that might have collected. So far after 2 years of heavy shop use with my business I have nothing but praise for the cartridges. I empty a 50 gal drum every 1 - 1 1/2 days. We have a cnc which runs 5 hours every day and an overhead belt sander which also runs approx 3 hours a day. There are always 4 gates open at all times, I empty the cartridge fine dust containers when I tap on them and there is no more metal ring. Ussually 1 time a month, and they only have approx 3" of fine dust in them.

It sounds as though you might have the 1 1/2 hp cyclone with cartrige built in as I can see that one plugging up. It is small and has fine pleats and is contained in the same cavity as all the sawdust. My cartriges on my system are 5'+ tall and approx 24 " diameter and only see cleaner air after the cyclone. I also have to say that I'm impressed with the filters as for the first 8 months the collecter filters were in the same room as we spray laquer in and I never noticed any contamination on the finish. I only had a wall put up to stop the laquer overspray from settling on the filters and possibly building up on the pleats. These filters really do their job I am a happy customer. Oneida will be my choice again when we go bigger.

[sheldon@dingwallguitars.com]

I had a look at Oneida's site after reading your post. Although they still make the unit I have, they've made a lot of changes to the whole line.

Very cool.

[gerald_d]

www.oneida-air.com (http://www.oneida-air.com/)

Sheldon, I suppose that your system is still without the cyclone canister?

[sheldon@dingwallguitars.com]

Gerald, Mine is the 1.5HP internal cartridge unit. The cartridge is inside a metal tube that protects it from debris. However the cartridge is a relatively small diameter 12" or so and the pleats are a tightly spaced paper based material.

Tapping and vibration alone will only remove the outer layer of cake. To get it really clean, we need to disassemble and blow out the filter. This is not only a pain, but messy too.

I'm going to look into upgrading to external shaker tubes or the new external cartridges. They should pay for themselves in labor savings in a couple of years.

[mrdovey]

It apears that I'm a real late-comer to this discussion. I've had enough interest my my dust collecting lash-up to post some pictures at http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/dust_collection.html

It's neither expensive nor fancy; but it does a fairly good job at sucking up the dust.

[Brady Watson]

Morris,
I like the 'shoe' idea
I have 2 Zeds and I can't get the supplied dust collector to fit on the Colombo....Needless to say dust collection has for the most part been a manual operation. That sort of setup might work.

One question...What do you need to take apart to change bits?

-Brady

[mrdovey]

Brady...

I've driven 2 washer-head screws into the front of the shoe with about 3/32" of the screw shaft exposed. The 1/16" lexan has a pair of 3/8" holes that line up with the screw heads, so I can lift the window off to change bits, then drop it back on the screws to cut. It's not very elegant, but it works.

The removable window closes the front of the shoe to restrict airflow to the immediate area where the cutter is working (otherwise it'd be drawing air from in front of the shoe). If you don't have a transparent material handy, a piece of plastic or plywood would work just as well - it just wouldn't be quite as fascinating for visitors. (-8

The shoe has worked well for my operations, which are mostly 2-dimensional. Some of the larger (more coarse?) sawdust is /thrown/ clear of the cutting area; but dust seems to be captured very effectively. There's no haze in the shop even when cutting MDF (such as when I surfaced my tabletop.)

I can imagine that the shoe would get in the way for large 3D projects - something that might make a difference for some 'Botters.

The price was right - all of the wood was scrap and I think I used about US$3 in hardware. A friend was building an ultralight in the next hanger and my window was a bit of scrap from his cockpit windscreen. We were both pleased.

Morris

[Brady Watson]

"There's no haze in the shop even when cutting MDF (such as when I surfaced my tabletop.) "

Sweet!