Dust Collector A Lot of Work

[Alan Schaffter]

I like Alan Schaffter's design too!

This is posted here somewhere but I couldn't find it so here it is again.

I lined the faces of the MDF gate bodies with laminate and made the slides from back to back pieces of laminate- slide as smoothly as silk. Use a jig saw or band saw to cut rough holes in MDF squares (gate body halves), apply laminate to the inside faces, then glue one piece of PVC pipe in the hole in one square and one half of a PVC pipe fitting into another square (for gate with male and female connections). I used PVC glue which expands to fill voids created by the less than perfectly cut holes. Use a handheld router or router table and bearing trim bit to open up the holes in the laminate. The bearing rides on the inside of the pipe/fitting creating a perfect hole.

I temporarily taped the slide to one gate half. After drilling an access hole, I used a router to make holes in the gate slide.

I temporarily put a strip of thin tape along each edge of the slide for tight clearance, sandwiched the slide between the gate halves, clamped the "sandwich", then joined it with strips of laminate applied to each side. All gates are working fine 7 years later and after being modified to autogates with the addition of pneumatic cylinders.





Blast Gate parts:





Open the holes in the laminate:



Apply laminate adhesive to the strips that hold the gate halves together:



Assemble gate:



Assembly line:

[Michael W. Clark]

Yes, we had a few booms at the Louisville plant and any remaining powder is tough to put out the fires. We had three driers, two of them were spray driers and two used a different process. All our baghouses were designed to vent explosions to suppressed areas. The drying units even had explosion suppression with sensors that sensed the pressure and then activated high pressure bottles with blasting caps. I worked on that a lot. However, once the drying was completed, we rarely had an incident in the storage and packaging process.
I remember after two explosions in a week I had to check resistance between pipe flanges that would have twelve 3/4 inch stud bolts and a bonding cable bolted to each flange. That was boring. They finally found the cause as a small piece of burned plastic that was missed during a clean. Ah, the good old days ??

Some materials are just a real pain in the neck to deal with from a DC/material handling perspective. Wood dust is actually a fairly mild application when you consider all the other things out there. We design systems with all the NFPA venting and isolation when required/requested, its becoming more common now. Its good for us, but unfortunately it really increases the initial price and maintenance of a DC system for the owner.

Mike

[Brian Brightwell]

This is a progress report. I started the DC today just to try it out. It pulled 16.9 amps with two six inch lines open and 15.5 with one open. I have a lot more to do.

This is how I made the connection to the bottom of the uni-saw. I flattened the pipe and made a box. It cleared all the saw dust out when I turned it on.



On the two table saws, I have the top of the saw coming out of one pipe and the feed to the bottom of the saw coming out of the other pipe. Now, I was going to put the slide gate at about 7.5 feet high and connect the two slide gates in series so both open and close together.

[Alan Schaffter]

Gee, I wouldn't way to pay your bill for all that PVC!!!

[ian maybury]

Keep on trucking, and watch out for adequate headroom.

It can come as a bit of a shock just how much work a full system is to install. There's a point half way through figuring out the first run and you look at the big pile of 'stuff' still to be used, and then the dust system (fan/cyclone/filters and all that stuff), and then the wiring, and then buying all the ancilliary bits and then the issues of sorting out machine hooding and maybe also some building tweaks (openings in walls and the like).....

'Oh sh1t'....

Found I just had to keep the head down, stay focused on the job at hand and eventually the day comes when its done.

ian

[Brian Brightwell]

Gee, I wouldn't way to pay your bill for all that PVC!!!

I don't want to pay the bill either but I got tired of eating dust!

Yes Ian, I am experiencing exactly what you describe. I hope to be finished by spring.

[Jim O'Dell]

Do you run both TS at the same time? If not, it looks like you made the ducting overly complicated to me. I have two table saws also, but I would never run both at the same time. The lower (cabinet) collection is done with one down pipe that is split to each saw, each with their own blast gate. DSCN2763.jpg Here is a view from in front of the contractor saw. Notice you can just barely see the blast gate under the contractor saw at the top right corner.DSCN2762.jpg And then the blast gate on the cabinet saw.DSCN2573-1.jpg The TS drop is the first drop on the system. The main pipe splits after that and my overhead guard comes off of one side of that split.
Now, I see you have two 6" pipes coming through the wall from the cyclone...are you using the CV Max? If so, then your piping makes perfect sense. Jim.

[Brian Brightwell]

I don't run two saws or even two tools a once. What I wanted to achieve was the top of the saw serviced by one 6 inch pipe from my spliter box (on the wall) and the bottom of the saw serviced by the other 6 inch pipe from the spliter box. It was explained that with two six inch runs was the best way to take advantage of the capacity of the CV Max.

I am very pleased with the noise level of the DC not bad at all. I don't even have to turn up the radio to here Rush!

I think I am going to move this gate to the vertical pipe and link the two gates together. That would eliminate one motion before making a cut.

[Brian Brightwell]

I still haven't made a decision on how to start the cyclone by a remote wireless control or micro switches on the blast gates. I know micro switches is more work but makes for one less thing to do each time. Can someone help me decide?

[Michael W. Clark]

Personal preference, but I don't think I would turn the collector off/on with gate switches unless I was going to automate the gates with the tool on/off. Otherwise, I think the remote is the easiest.

[Brian Brightwell]

I got these slide gates installed today. Only 8 more machines to go.

[Alan Schaffter]

Personal preference, but I don't think I would turn the collector off/on with gate switches unless I was going to automate the gates with the tool on/off. Otherwise, I think the remote is the easiest.

I concur about gate switches, except I recommend that autogates only be used to turn the collector on, NOT off unless you add a "delay on break" relay. If you don't and are doing a bunch of quick, sequential operations you will cycle the blower motor too often and risk overheating and damaging the motor, pitting the centrifugal switch contacts, or burning up the start capacitor. For that reason many motor manufacturers recommend only six start cycles per hour.

My system is "almost" totally automatic- my electro-pneumatic blast gates are normally triggered by the machine they service but each one can also be opened using a wall button if I use that drop to clean or clear the machine when it is off or connect a vac line, etc. to it. The DC is triggered and starts when any blast gate is opened via either method. But, I elected to configure it so I must manually turn off the DC. I decided the delay on break relay would add to the complexity. Additionally, the way my system works, once the DC is started, if there is a problem, I can still turn the DC off by pressing one of the stop buttons around the shop. With a delay on break relay that would not be possible during the delay period.

[David Kumm]

I would add that it is dangerous to have the gates close immediately when the machine is shut down, especially saws and shapers. Set the delay on break so the machine is completely stopped before the gate closes. Better for air quality too. By the way, Alan's pneumatic gate design is very cheap to build with parts from ebay. He was a great help to me. Dave

[Chris Parks]

I have a customer who has just done an installation using a programmable controller on each machine to control the Clearvue automated gates, they took standard gates and powered them with Pneumatic cylinders. The cyclone is never turned off the gates are what controls the system. It is the most complete installation I have ever seen and they are going to put up a web site showing the whole process. I will post a link so others may drool as to duplicate it would be very costly for anyone. It was all done under a government grant as part of the Men's Shed program in Australia.

[Wade Lippman]

What size inner tube? Where does one buy an inner tube?!

I have used old bicycle tube on Bessey clamp handles. They work nicely here.