Cyclone filter - a better way???

[Kevin Jenness]

My impression is that cartridge filters are not that well suited to quantities of fine dust. If outdoor venting is not an option and space is available, tube or bag filters of sufficient area are easier to clean by occasional whacking on the outside.

[Wade Lippman]

That's what I thought too, until I tried it.

As I said in my original reply, I live in northern Canada (I can drive into Alaska in about 4 hours) and the heat loss I experience, while noticeable, is not enough to concern me. I originally thought I'd vent outside in the summer, and live with having to constantly clean my filter during the winter. And yet, when winter came, I found that I could continue to just vent outside.

I don't run my dust collector all day, but continuous usage of 1 - 3 hours on any given day is not unusual, and cumulative usage of short duration (say 5 minutes) over any given day can be over 4 hours (all of the preceeding usage estimations, of course, are dependant upon what I'm doing that day).

It would be fun to have a HVAC type calculate what it would cost to run a 2000cfm DC for an hour with a 70 degree difference. I suspect it is not trivial, but don't really know.

OP... I think you are making too much out of this. Unless your situation is really marginal, a little dust in your filter won't hurt anything.

[Wade Lippman]

Not if all the tubes only get inserted a few inches. The silt would then settle to the bottom.

Unless you took care to really mix the air into the water, the air bubbling out would take most of the dust with it. And if you did really mix them, the air flow would go to nothing.

I wonder if you could run the exhaust to a second cyclone.
I have a Dyson canister vacuum on a Dust Deputy. I can fill the can with ROS dust and nothing gets through to the Dyson filters; about 95% is captured by the Dust Deputy and all the other 5% by the Dyson cyclone.

Mind you, I am happy with how my Grizzly 3hp cyclone works out of the box.