whole-shop dust collection vs respirator

[Ron Rutter]

Terry. My idea of make-up air is an attempt to by-pass short circuiting, by introducing air on my side of the work. I know it seeps in from the wall behind my lathe.
To those who only use a respirator when sanding I say do yourselves a BIG FAVOUR and wear one at all times!!
Cheers. Ron.

[roger wiegand]

I'm not sure how you intended this statement but, as written, it is patently false. DC at the lathe provides substantial value in removing dust, most especially while sanding but even when turning. If you mean in terms of getting rid of woodchips only, then yes, it doesn't pull too many of them in.

Since you mentioned sweeping up chips, I'll also add that it is a good idea to run the DC and wear a dusk mask while sweeping as the very act of sweeping puts a lot of additional fine dust in the air.

Well in my experience the DC may catch half the dust from sanding and a much smaller fraction of chips, in large part because you'd have to put a collection hood between the work and your body to be more effective at catching chips coming off the tool, and I at least, couldn't work that way. Half of the fine dust is better than nothing (hence "use both"), but not by much from a health perspective, certainly not enough to go without a respirator. I can imagine that a big fan as some described might work well to move sanding dust away from you, but the amount of air my "1800 cfm" DC can move down a six inch pipe doesn't cut it. I'd want to be catching fine dust at a 99% level before taking the respirator off-- and that's only because I'm not very worried about it at my age.

Sweeping may indeed be one of the most hazardous activities from a dust perspective. I wear my HEPA PAPR and only gather the macro shavings before using a HEPA vacuum cleaner to get the finer stuff.

[Rick Gibson]

Yes to the respirator. I have a shop air cleaner, a 1 hp dust collector that I added the oneida cyclone and a pleated filter to as well as a shop vac with the oneida dust deputy and HEPA filter. Using the air cleaner and dust collector after a few hours of work I can sometimes still see dust particles floating in the air. I use the Trend air shield nearly all the time in the shop. About the only time I don't use it is when doing pens on the small lathe. Here I have the inlet to the shop vac an inch or less from the turning and being that close it happily sucks up everything.