Dust Collection Suggestions

[ckrysiak]

First I would like to thank everyone for their posts, they were extremely helpful in setting up the ShopBot. I've had the 48x48x12 PRSAlpha ShopBot in operation now for about two months and have been fortunate enough to get enough business to have already paid for it!

However, I badly need to upgrade the dust collection system as I've only been using a Craftsman shop vac. I fabricate parts from ceramic fiber insulating board which you can not get a chip load from when machining, it produces very fine dust particles (the closest thing I can think of to describe the particle size would be if you were to machine drywall). The shop vac actually works fine for about two minutes of machining before the filter clogs up.

I've purchased a dust collector from Harbor Freight (see attached picture) and want to add a separator using a metal trash can with a cyclone lid. My question to everyone is has anyone had any experience with a separator in a dust collection system involving very fine dust particles? If so, what type of cyclone lid design did you use? I have a feeling the separator will be useless in my application because in order to get the flow rate needed to actually extract the dust at the router, the flow rate will be too high at the separator and will just pull the dust through to the dust collector. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance for your time, Chad.