Another dust collection question

[Duncan Foster]

Finally stepping up to serious dust collection. I'm in a 20 x 25 garage so space is a premium. Have done A LOT of research and I'm leaning towards a cyclone. Seems to be the best as far as protecting your lungs etc. I have no problem hooking up one machine at a time to it. I've been looking at the grizzly 0703 but the HEPA version. I have not seen a lot on any forums discussing this model. There's quite a bit on the basic 0703 however and it seems to be a split camp. any feed back would be appreciated

thanks much

[David Kumm]

Would not be my choice. Collector is rated at 775 cfm @ 1.8" sp. That means you will be pulling much less than that in real life. The issue won't be the quality of the air after filtering but how much makes it into the filters and how much spews out of the machine. Spun Bond or Nano will clean the air as well as what you breathe in the house. Buy a little more powerful unit that captures more dust rather than the hepa upgrade and you will be better off unless your machines don't need more than 300-500 cfm. Dave

[Duncan Foster]

Thanks Dave. Starting to look at the Oneida line

[J.R. Rutter]

I know that HP isn't the whole story with dust collectors, but from my practical experience, anything less than 2 HP has been a disappointment to me - even with a single machine hooked up.

[David Kumm]

Look at Clearvue and even Grizzly. The collector motor works hard, particularly the single phase, so a quality motor is also important. I prefer the CV cyclone but like the Baldor motors on Oneida. Leeson are pretty good too depending on size and frame. Dave

[Mark Gibney]

I have a Clearvue Cyclone, and if I was buying a new collection system I'd look very hard at the Oneida. The Clearvue comes as a kit, with the parts made from MDF and plexiglass. Some people has asked me if I made it myself.

It takes a lot of putting together, and then you need to make something to mount the whole thing on.

When I set it up in our two car garage and turned it on the noise almost blew my head off. I got a gauge at Radio Shack and it read as 108 decibels (it's the larger of the two systems Clearvue offered at the time). I since moved to a large rented workshop and have the machine in a "sound booth".

[Ole Anderson]

I have the Oneida 2 hp SDG and am very happy, but I am wishing I went with the 3 hp version for a few bucks more. But I am kind of a Tool Time kind of guy. Clearview puts out some serious cfm, but I just couldn't get past the homebuilt look either. I measured 84 dBa up close, but putting it in a closet got down to 70 dBa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X8qwMqm3Ek

[David Ragan]

I am a CV fan.

Have the next to biggest one. Doesn't matter to me what it looks like. It does a great job.

The link below is the engineer who is a WW, who is all about dust collection, pulmonary toxicity, engineering, etc. I would guess he makes some $ from CV. Have never known him to be faulted, though. Probably has been, I'm just not aware of it.

http://billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/

Anyway, I got the biggest I could afford, and a Jet whole room cleaner-was best @ the time. I run them both when generating dust.

Noise-I am pretty sensitive to loud noise. There are ear plugs and muffs all over our house and shop.

My machine is about 90dB, maybe the uneven corner it is in dampens some of the sound. But, it is not shrill, and obviously not impact noise-which is most hazardous. Oh-for the cynics out there my hearing is great via formal testing.

I do my best to get the dust immediately after it is made @ the machine.

Some day I'd like to have a particle detector/counter

[Kent Adams]

Finally stepping up to serious dust collection. I'm in a 20 x 25 garage so space is a premium. Have done A LOT of research and I'm leaning towards a cyclone. Seems to be the best as far as protecting your lungs etc. I have no problem hooking up one machine at a time to it. I've been looking at the grizzly 0703 but the HEPA version. I have not seen a lot on any forums discussing this model. There's quite a bit on the basic 0703 however and it seems to be a split camp. any feed back would be appreciated

thanks much

I have the 3hp Oneida Smart dust collector. A little pricey (comes with all the bells & whistles) but loving it. If you go with Oneida, negotiate the shipping because I don't think they are exactly always honest on shipping costs (attempted to inflate my shipping until I told them I'd arrange for shipping myself through Fed-Ex and then they came down to match my Fed-Ex quote).

[ian maybury]

+1 that adequate CFM is pretty much essential. See Bill Pentz's pages. A six inch ducted system that's flowing freely and doing the sort of numbers needed for good collection will draw something just over 4HP.

For what it's worth vibration isolation can make a lot of difference to noise levels from a fan. It's well worth double soft mounting to isolate the fan from the structure of the building , and also placing a soft joint between the fan and the ducting for the same reason. It can take a little tuning to sort a stiffness that works best, but it's possible to almost entirely cancel any transfer of vibration from the fan through it's mounting with the right set up. (example below) Probably best not to tighten the stock soft mount too much on the CV. (my system is DIY from Bill P's drawings)

It's quite subtle. What may be going on is that some element of the building structure or ductwork is picking up and resonating to a frequency - and then feeding this back to create all sorts of harmonics etc. Even though a lot may be coming from the hardware it still sounds like just ordinary fan noise.

Should you happen to be running a VFD a small drop or increase in RPM can also be quite effective to tune out noise too - there can be turbulence effects in the fan exhaust that cause noise that are highly RPM specific...

The CV format offer some extra flexibility of install, and it does well on cyclone and filter performance on finer dust. The Oneida alternative is a nicely packaged unit in metal - it's as a result possibly more re-saleable...

fan soft mounting 4-11-11.jpg fan in situ 31-10-11.jpg flex joint to cyclone.jpg

[Cody Colston]

Several years ago (circa 2004) I purchased the 2hp Commercial Cyclone from Oneida. The catch was that they didn't have a 2 hp motor in stock so they put a 3 hp Leeson on it at no extra charge. I did whole-shop ducting with 6" PVC with shop-made blast gates at every machine. Most of the machines had 4" outlets so I reduced from 6" to 4" at the machines with very short lengths of flexible ducting.

I'm still very satisfied with the Oneida Cyclone. I'm still using the same filter and every so often I will remove it, take it to a carwash and wash it out with the high-pressure wand. I don't direct the spray thru the filter media but downward between the pleats. Once it dries and is reinstalled, it will lift the 35 gallon DC collection drum about 4" off the floor with only one duct open.

[Susumu Mori]

I moved up from a single stage to Oneida 2HP Portable Gorilla. Improvement of the air condition is huge. The power improvement is substantial. The noise is, well, louder. I believe I read about 94 dB at a meter or two away. I tucked it to the corner and covered up with 2-inch foam boards. Not sure how effective they are but in my working environment (within 10-foot flexible hose serving a single machine each time), it is 80+ dB level. I changed the bin four or five times now but only a trace of dusts in the filter bin. Very impressive.

One thing I noticed that the two reputable companies, Oneida and CV, both have cyclones with very long necks, compared to Griz, Laguna, etc. This makes the portable units look very awkward. However, I suspect it is a very important feature for better performance.

[J.R. Rutter]

Better fine dust removal with the longer cone. I had an Oneida cyclone with 2 HP blower in my garage many years ago. It was good for a one-man show. A friend from the Badger Pond days gave me a 10HP cyclone with a short cone and it let a LOT more fine dust through despite the higher velocity. The Torit/Donaldson that we have now also has a nice long cone and spins out all but the powder.

[Scott DelPorte]

I have a similar situation in that I have limited space, and so I got the earlier version of the G0703 because it just fit into an area below a set of stairs. I have found it quite adequate for my one man shop. I have 6" metal ducts throughout the shop that I neck down to 4" right before the machines. The machine is in its own "closet" under the stairs, with an air return that is really just a large hole in the wall with a metal grate over it. I have a tablesaw, 20" planer, 16" jointer, 24" bandsaw, and 24" drum sander hooked up the it with blast gates so I usually just run one machine at a time. The bandsaw is the only one that "leaks" appreciable dust, but that has more to do with how the dust collection port is designed for that machine. I have found it more than adequate for my shop, but I have to say that I have no experience with the other machines that are being mentioned, so I cant make a comparison.

My experience is that the cyclone in my unit is extremely efficient with dust collection. I empty the drum under the cyclone often, but have never had more than a tiny bit of dust enter into the bag under the filter. This tells me the cyclone pretty much gets it all. If I was predominantly using the drum sander (smaller particles), it might be different. The only thing I wish was different was that the drum under the cyclone held more so I could empty it less often.

[Duncan Foster]

Thanks for all the feedback. I think it's time to do still some more research one and a half horsepower does not seem to be the answer