Dust Collection Best Practices

[Ray DuBose]

Ordered new tools and knew I was going to have to start looking at Dust Collection next but before I could really research much there was a Fantastic Deal on an older Oneida V-3000 System on CL and I snapped it up.. And not it just sits in the corner of my garage with me kind of intimidated on how I need to set up duct work and were this thing should be located and such. I've looked at a lot of others setups and trying to figure out what kind of pipe I need and such. Figured I would check with you guys to see the best practices on how this thing should be laid out I guess.

First I'm in a 2 car garage in a smaller zero lot line type neighborhood. The Main tools I will be using this thing for are
1. Hammer K3 Winner Table Saw
2. Hammer A3 31 Joiner/Planer
3. Woodpecker Router Table With Super Fence that has a dust collection port on it.
4. Palm Sanders (possibly the same drop as the router table and just move the hose over.
5. Possibly one of those sweeper shoots that you sweep your shavings over to and it sucks them up but not sure on this just now

So If I put the Cyclone up against the wall do I need to run hard pipe up and do drops down to the tools with flex hose? I assume I'll need Gates for all my Drops? Is there a big difference in $ or performance in going with either Metal piping vs. PVC / Plastic Pipes?

Also the Cyclone has a cartridge filter on it but curious as to venting it to the outside. Someone on one of the post said that the amount of fine dust that goes that direction is small and doesn't really show up outside. That would be o.k. but if it's going to look like a smoke stack out the side of my house or build up a large pile outside the house that wouldn't and I would need to leave the cartridge on it.

Also if I run a main pipe down the wall and across the ceiling then what's the best way to split off for the drops? I keep seeing these Y type fittings for splitting but some of them are $100 each..

Any help would be appreciated.. I'm tired of looking at this thing and ready to start using it.

Thanks

Ray

[Joe Angrisani]

Gotta love those Craigslist deals!

There's lots of variables, but there's dozens of threads here on SMC you can back-read. Loaded with photos, too. And don't forget Google. And read the info on the different manufacturers' web sites.

A few basic thoughts:
Carry 6" rigid lines as close to the machines as you can.
Keep the runs as straight as you can (meaning gentle curves and wyes).
Put the jointer/planer as close to the cyclone as you can.
Use PVC for lower cost.
Don't exhaust outside in your described neighborhood.

[Tom Cornish]

+1 to what Joe said. Venting outside in a residential area isn't a good idea, probably at least as much from a noise standpoint as from the appearance of dust. Up here in the frozen northland blowing all my warm shop air out gets expensive, too.

I built a closet around my cyclone with sound absorptive foam to mitigate the noise and it makes a big difference. I ran 6" PVC ducting everywhere, and if I recall right, the straight sections of pipe cost about $15.00/10 feet, and the wyes were about $19.00. I used Sch 35 because it was more available than the 2729 that is often recommended.

[Ray DuBose]

Seems like most pictures I see have a Elbow Joint to bring the line up right off the Cyclone. Is this for a reason other than to just put the Pipe higher on the wall?

Yea I haven't turned this thing on since your not suppose to without duct work installed, not real sure how loud it's going to be. My neighbor on that side usually doesn't have any issues with it since he does woodworking himself but I've had a couple of neighbors come remind me that it's 11pm and could I please wrap it up for the night

Do you have a picture of the box you build around yours? Does the motor get hot?

[Kelly Colin Mark]

Yea I haven't turned this thing on since your not suppose to without duct work installed, not real sure how loud it's going to be.

How could it possibly be bad to run the cyclone without duct work installed ? The only issue I could see would be a safety one.

BTW, I have a V3000. I too have been stymied with figuring out how to run all the duct work. In the meantime I bought 10' of 6" flex and tested that with about 6' more of 4" flex connected to a small Inca table saw, it worked fine. I don't know if it's going to work very well for your palm sanders. I had hoped to be able to use it with my Festool stuff but it's clear a vac works better in those cases.

Mine is loud, but it's not as loud as I expected it to be. I have it enclosed in a room where my water tank is and bought a bunch of remotes. I would say that where it is, it isn't much louder than my Steel City overhead dust filtration unit.

As for the elbow joint - I'm pretty sure most people do it just to get the main duct height at a more reasonable level. The 90 is a hindrance to air flow otherwise and if you can avoid it or graduate it more, I'm sure it would be more optimal. As for me, I'll have to do the elbow thing myself. I really wish I had about 3 feet more ceiling space.

[Ray DuBose]

Yea I just gave Oneida a Shout after digging through their site. They have a free service to lay out your duct work but I don't qualify since I bought it second hand. They also echoed that it wouldn't work with palm sanders but would with the router table (although I don't think the port on the router table is all that much bigger)

Don't know how it would damage it other than there wouldn't be any resistance on the line and it could cause stress somewhere. I'm just going by the instructions that they have with it. I do have about 10' of flex line that came with it. Guess I could hook it up and turn the thing on to gauge how loud it will be.

[Kelly Colin Mark]

For some reason, dust collection makes my head spin. I still can't get my head around a lot of concepts that other people seem to have no problem with. When I bought my V3000, I just told Oneida, "this is what I have, just tell me what I ought to buy". I didn't have the energy to read through Pentz's site any more or play around with SP calculators.

As for your theory about connecting it without duct.... I guess that makes sense. Sticking the flex on should eliminate the problem. I'll also add that for me, 10' of flex is a pretty crappy solution - that hose gets in the way everywhere and is a pain to deal with.

[David Kumm]

The concern of running without ductwork has to do with overheating the motor. Restriction on air flow reduces the amp draw on the motor relative to no restriction. won't hurt for short periods. Whatever the input size is on the cyclone is what the main line should be- at least until a drop or two is made. If your blower size allows for certain cfm, you want your piping to approach that capability. There are tables to tell you that. Starting out with the wrong size, large or small won't make your system not useable, it just won't live up to the potential you have paid for. If you do some research it will start to make sense. Dave

[Dan Friedrichs]

You can probably safely turn the blower on if you connect it to that 10' piece of flex hose. That should give you an idea of how loud it is.

Spend several weeks reading Pentz's site. It seems overwhelming at first, but it will quickly start to make sense. It is much better to have a good fundamental understanding of what's going on, than to just try to blindly replicate solutions that other people claim work.

Just to clarify one point Joe made above: there's no point* to running 6" ducts if you reduce them down at the tool - the smallest diameter of the run essentially determines the airflow of the entire run. If your tools all have 4" ports, and you are unwilling to modify them to be larger, and you only run one tool at a time, then you might as well use 4" ductwork throughout the whole system.


(*there is a minor additional amount of friction losses, but for smooth-wall pipe in a small garage shop, this is negligible)

[Tom Cornish]

Seems like most pictures I see have a Elbow Joint to bring the line up right off the Cyclone. Is this for a reason other than to just put the Pipe higher on the wall?

Yea I haven't turned this thing on since your not suppose to without duct work installed, not real sure how loud it's going to be. My neighbor on that side usually doesn't have any issues with it since he does woodworking himself but I've had a couple of neighbors come remind me that it's 11pm and could I please wrap it up for the night

Do you have a picture of the box you build around yours? Does the motor get hot?

Here's my closet. It's about 2' X 4' - as small as I could make it. I don't have any overheating problems as I designed the outlet vent so that air has to flow over the motor to return to the room. I used a low voltage relay running the motor contactor which allows me to use leftover Cat5 wire and 3 and 4 way switches to have multiple switches around my shop.


collector open.jpg collector closet skeleton.jpg

[Ray DuBose]

The router tables port is smaller the rest of the machines, the Hammer Machines use a 120mm (5"?) connector. Oneida said to run a 6" main down your wall or where ever your wanting to go and drop 5" off it to the machine except for the Router Table.

So will running my branches from the wall to the floor help with cfm more than running my main across the ceiling and dropping branches down to the tools from there? think it's a 10' or 12' ceiling.

[Tom Cornish]

Everything is a compromise -ideally you'd run a straight as the crow flies run from the machine to the collector, or better yet, put the collector 2 feet from the machine. Since neither of these are likely very practical, we do the best we can. 6" smooth PVC pipe with 45 degree bends and no 90s (90s can be made out of 2 45s but doing this gives the benefit of a larger radius of the bend) will go a fair distance, depending on the cyclone power. The ClearVue that I have, which is based off of Bill Pentz' design can push 110' of straight pipe, if I remember right. It's the bends, reducers, and flex hose that kills you.

[Dan Friedrichs]

The router tables port is smaller the rest of the machines, the Hammer Machines use a 120mm (5"?) connector. Oneida said to run a 6" main down your wall or where ever your wanting to go and drop 5" off it to the machine except for the Router Table.

I don't know why they said that - it's not the best idea. If you are going to use the 5" connectors on the Hammer machines, and no 6" ports on anything, then you should just do the whole system in 5" (and since they don't make PVC in 5", you'd use metal). If you want to use PVC (cheaper, etc), then use 6" and reduce to 5" wherever you like (doing it right up close to the machine is no better than anywhere else).

So will running my branches from the wall to the floor help with cfm more than running my main across the ceiling and dropping branches down to the tools from there? think it's a 10' or 12' ceiling.

The vertical distance doesn't really matter - the force of gravity on such small particles of dust is nothing in comparison to the force of the moving air. Design the ductwork such that the total distance is as short as possible - whether that is vertical distance or horizontal distance doesn't matter.

[David Kumm]

If you ever plan to expand and add drops, size the mainline in proportion to the impeller capabilities. If your largest machine takes a 5" drop you still want more cfm if you can get it because distance, bends, and leaks from all the drops along the way will reduce the cfm. Too large a main line will cause chips to slow down too much unless you open the appropriate gates but that is a lot easier than tearing everything out because you found out that the real world experience doesn't match your expectations. If your 5" port doesn't seem adequate it is likely the main line is undersized assuming the motor and impeller are not. The main line. input and output, limit the entire system. Read up and get those right and the other errors are easy to fix. Dave

[Phil Thien]

I don't know why they said that - it's not the best idea.

It might be a plus if you wanted to run multiple pickups to the same tool, like a table saw (cabinet and overhead).