My shop is small – basically I have most of my power tools in a row down one wall with most on wheels so I can move them as needed (and also get them out of the way of the cars). I recently added a lathe and when sanding, the dust was starting to get to me. Sound familiar?
I had previously added a fresh air intake on one side of the shop and an attic exhaust fan on the other to exhaust it all. While that helped, it did not do enough.
So with the help of a 20% off coupon I bought the ever popular 2HP HF unit:
HF Dust Collector.gif
After reading many posts here and on several other websites, I decided, to modify the unit, so now it looks like this.
Dust Collector 004.jpg
The enclosure is made of ¾ plywood, and the metal can is 30 gallons. You will notice that the metal can is off the bottom by about an inch. The impeller/motor is on top and draws through a 5 inch duct that extends about 2.5 inches down into the separator unit, to which I added a Thien baffle (Google “Phil Thien” for details – that guy is brilliant). Most of this design came from others except for the plywood box/eyebolt hook ideas. The plywood box allows me to remove the metal can without lifting up the heavy motor/impeller unit. The metal can is held up by two eyebolt hooks - one in the front left corner, and one in the back right corner. The metal can is removed by loosening the nuts on the eyebolt hooks that pull up on the metal can handles. I also cut an access hole on the right side to ease the access to the right-rear eyebolt hook.
Dust Collector 005.jpg
Living in the sunny South (it only snowed once this year), I will exhaust the fine dust out to Mother Nature through a dryer vent, which I have yet to install. The long hose coiled on the floor will be shortened and hooked to that dryer vent . Since my garage is unheated, I will not be losing much heat….and it could be a good thing in the summertime.
I have run 4 inch S&D PVC to the tools in the line – and the one farthest from the DC is 15 feet – so while I know 5 inch pipe would have been better, this seems to have a lot of suction - the initial tests have been very good. I have installed self-made blast gates, so that only one machine at a time has an open inlet. The Thien baffle is also amazingly effective.
I built in a floor sweep inlet controlled by a blast gate, and I really like that. This week I will build the inlet collectors for the lathe, the belt sander and the table saw. I will post more pictures when the inlet collectors are done.
Thanks to everyone for your previous posts on DC's,
Angie
(No, I am a guy)